A bill intended to move medical marijuana laws closer to the citizens’ initiative passed last fall received unanimous support from the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee on May 10.
The bill will go before each branch of legislature in the coming weeks, and if approved, will remove the requirement that patients register with the state and release their medical records to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The bill also simplifies the process of adding conditions to the list approved for treatment with marijuana.
As approved, the bill, sponsored by Rep. Deb Sanderson (R-Chelsea), represents a compromise between Sanderson and the DHHS.
“The department is in full support of the amended bill,” said Catherine Cobb, the Director of the Division of Licensing and Regulatory Services for DHHS. When Sanderson first presented the bill to the committee last week, DHHS expressed concerns.
As originally written, Sanderson’s bill would have removed the list of approved conditions, leaving it up to individual physicians to determine their patients’ treatment.
Currently, state law calls of an advisory board to determine what conditions make the list.
Sanderson’s bill, as approved by the committee, removes the advisory board, and instead leaves it up to DHHS to make the list for conditions to be added via citizen petitions.
The bill creates standardized paperwork for medical marijuana patients, whether they register with the state or not, that they can present to law enforcement.
The bill also directs law enforcement to seize only marijuana that is in excess of a patient’s prescription; if a patient is in possession of more than their prescribed amount of marijuana. If a patient is caught with excess marijuana twice, they will be barred from receiving medical marijuana.
Patients, whose medical information has already been provided to the state as part of the currently mandatory state registry, will be able to request that their records be purged from the state’s database, Cobb said.
“We tried to get closer to the citizens’ initiative, but retain some of the safeguards we have in place,” Cobb said.
Sanderson did not return call requesting comment by press time.
