Cannabis and caring
DENVER – Twenty years after California legalized it for sick people, medical marijuana has become a billion-dollar-a-year business so cloaked in emotion that it would be virtually impossible to dismantle.
Without any real national discussion, most Americans live where it’s possible to get pot for pain, nausea or other ailments. Thirty states permit some form of medical cannabis use, and several more are poised to approve it this fall — a sign this industry has altered public opinion among conservatives and liberals.
“I don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat — I don’t care who you are,” said Kevin Murphy, CEO of Acreage Holdings, a medical marijuana firm with operations in 11 states. “If you have a brother dying of cancer and this is the only thing that brings him comfort … you are an advocate.”
Millions of Americans look to marijuana to relieve pain, improve their appetite and ease the side effects of chemotherapy. Others swear by it for helping with posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety or seizures. Millions use it just to
A strong emotional current helps medical marijuana flourish as an industry
“They effectively changed the face of marijuana from a loser in a basement to your sick grandmother. It was, frankly, a brilliant PR move.”
Kevin Sabet
Smart Approaches to Marijuana
sleep better.
Although emotions helped drive legalization, medical marijuana simultaneously became a big business. As many as 135,000 people work in the medical pot business across the country, generating $1.8 billion in income taxes and at least $300 million in state sales taxes last year, said Matt Karnes of GreenWave Advisors.
Marijuana workers buy and rent property, spending their salaries — and paying a significantly higher tax rate than traditional workers, thanks to an IRS ruling originally designed to fight drug traffickers.
Congress has taken only tentative steps to recognize the industry’s power, and the executive branch has not acknowledged that millions of Americans consume marijuana in lieu of prescription medicines.
In March, lawmakers barred the federal government from interfering with any state-regulated medical marijuana system, but there has been no movement on plans in Congress to lower marijuana’s classification as a Schedule 1 drug.
“As an industry, we have the opportunity to really get it right,” said Jen Lujan of California-based medical marijuana company Eaze. Lujan founded Weed for Good, which connects low-income sick people with medical-grade cannabis.
Marijuana’s use cuts across social and economic backgrounds. About 24 million Americans ages 12 and older reported using cannabis in the past 30 days, according to a study in 2016 by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Five states, including Utah, are considering whether to permit medical marijuana this fall. In announcing his opposition to granting broad access to medical marijuana in Utah, Gov. Gary Herbert said he worried that allowing medical pot “would potentially open the door to recreational use.”
Every state that has legalized recreational pot started out permitting only medical cannabis, then expanded once people got comfortable.
It’s a strategy not lost on Kevin Sabet, who runs Smart Approaches to Marijuana. He is a former senior adviser to the Office of National Drug Control Policy and a critic of what he calls “Big Marijuana.”
Groups such as Sabet’s worry the nation has moved too quickly when it comes to permitting widespread marijuana use, especially when it’s wrapped in the cloak of “medicine.”
Those products haven’t gone through the same federal testing as prescription medicine or even over-the-counter drugs such as Advil.
Under federal law, doctors cannot directly prescribe marijuana because it’s still illegal, although they can prescribe marinol, a synthetic version of THC that users say is far less effective and much more expensive than real cannabis.
A small number of medically accepted studies has shown marijuana appears to be an effective treatment for chronic pain and symptoms of multiple sclerosis.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine warned of dangers from marijuana use: an increased risk of car crashes, lower birth weight babies and problems with memory and attention. It found strong connections between heavy cannabis use and the development of schizophrenia and other psychoses.
Deni Carise, chief scientific officer at Recovery Centers of America, objects to the industry around pot. “The reality is that whenever something becomes cheaper and more available, more people are going to use it,” she said.