On medical cannabis, listen to experts
The Medical Cannabis Advisory Board has made the best decision for addicts by recommending opioid use disorder be named a qualifying condition for the use of cannabis. All that needs to happen for patients to get relief is for Department of Health Secretary Lynn Gallagher to listen to experts.
Even with the enthusiastic recommendations of medical professionals and with the advisory board’s advice, Gallagher’s opinion is all that matters. In November 2016, the board took a similar position. Seven months later, in June, Gallagher ignored the recommendation. (Her boss, Gov. Susana Martinez, also might not be sold on medical marijuana to relieve opioid withdrawal symptoms. Martinez vetoed a GOP-back House bill that would have allowed medical marijuana to be prescribed for opioid use disorder.)
The decision not to add opioid disorder as a qualifying condition was the wrong one. Science is demonstrating that cannabis is useful to people with the symptoms of opioid withdrawal. It also successfully treats chronic pain, the condition that causes so many people to be prescribed opioids in the first place. With opioid use in New Mexico and the nation at a crisis, it is essential to find ways to help people kick addiction — and to avoid it in the first place. Medical marijuana can do both.
Currently, some 48,000 patients are enrolled in the medical cannabis program in New Mexico — being treated for a number of conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, intractable nausea, cancer, Parkinson’s disease and others. Some 20 conditions are approved, and the board recommended the addition of five more last week, including opioid disorder.
All board members are medical doctors, adding weight to their recommendations. Gallagher, on the other hand, is an attorney. In announcing her decision last summer to ignore the board’s earlier recommendation on opioid use disorder as a qualifying condition, Gallagher wrote that there “appears to be little if any medical literature that actually addresses the effect of cannabis usage on persons with a diagnosed opiate use disorder.”
Gallagher should read the scientific studies that do exist. Talk to health workers on the front lines working with addicts. Talk to the addicts themselves. Talk to members of the cannabis advisory board; as doctors, they have seen the suffering firsthand.
Investigate and try to understand just how medical marijuana can ease the symptoms of withdrawal so that people no longer are suffering. And don’t dawdle — this decision should not take months. Lives literally are hanging in the balance.