Patients suffer as medical pot relief lags behind

There’s a good chance medical marijuana won’t be available to those who need it by the Sept. 8 deadline, and that’s not OK.

Ohio became the 25th state to legalize medical marijuana in 2016 and set the deadline for when patients 21 or older suffering from 21 severe medical conditions — including cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s — can purchase and possess up to a 90-day supply with authorization of a certified doctor.

It won’t be your uncle’s garden-variety homegrown. State law requires it be in edible, oil and other topical forms, or in plant form for vaporization, but not smoking.

And it won’t get users “high” because the therapeutic chemical cannabidiol, used to treat conditions like childhood epilepsy, isn’t intoxicating.

House Bill 523, signed by Gov. John Kasich on June 8, 2016, moved through the General Assembly with uncommon speed so legislators could get ahead of a ballot initiative sought by Ohioans for Medical Marijuana. The bill was introduced on April 4, 2016, and cleared both chambers by May 25, 2016. Legislators didn’t waste any time to learn what the ballot issue might do, and Ohioans for Medical Marijuana, citing a lack of resources and money, dropped its plans.

It was expected the plants could be grown in a year and that patients could have it in their hands within 16 months. That must have been a pipe dream. As of last week, a representative of a majority of the growers said he didn’t know of any cultivators that have planted yet.

“Patients are very, very concerned product won’t be ready,” said Bob Bridges, a patient advocate on the state’s Medical Marijuana Advisory Committee.

Legal disputes, mishandled applications and bureaucratic delays have hampered the program. The state has charged three agencies with regulation — the Ohio State Pharmacy Board to license dispensaries, State Medical Board to approve doctors allowed to recommend marijuana to patients and Department of Commerce to license growers.

When the commerce department rejected a Cincinnati businessman’s bid for a growing operation, he discovered that a consultant in the screening process had been convicted of drug crimes, prompting a lawsuit and more snags.

Department of Commerce Director Jacqueline Williams responded that the department wasn’t required to do background checks. She also said recently that not all the licensed businesses, including 24 cultivators, 40 processors and 57 retail dispensaries statewide, will be open on Sept. 8.

Sixty-seven of 185 applicants for cultivator licenses have filed administrative challenges. The state hasn’t chosen testing labs or dispensaries because the pharmacy board is waiting for background checks and other details from applicants. Eighty-nine doctors have been cleared by the State Medical Board and more could be approved this month.

Meanwhile, patients like Dane Griffith wait for relief. The 27-year old Columbus man suffers from ankylos spondylikis, a progressive type of arthritis. “Cannabis can do a lot of the workhorse job of these other medications with minimal long-term side-effects,” he said.

It is understandable that creating a new bureaucracy will hit some snags, but dividing responsibility among three agencies might have weakened the resolve of any one entity to get this done.

Government inaction and ineffectiveness is bad enough by itself; leaving sick people to suffer in the meantime is inexcusable. Enjoy cartoons by Nate Beeler at Dispatch.com/opinion/beeler