Minnesota Public Comment Mtg on Med Cannabis 10/22

[MinnBobber]

Attention Minnesotans, this Thursday (10/22) the MN Health Dept is holding a meeting to get public comments on med cannabis.
5:30 - 7 PM at the Mpls Urban League.

They are fielding comments on the question: should intractable pain be added to the super-restricted tiny list of approved conditions elig for med cannabis program?

The answer is a no-brainer, of course it should be added.
They need to add any condition with pain and/or inflammation but this is a tiny baby step in the right direction.....

Hopefully, this committee will recommend intractable pain be added and hopefully many more additions will be made in the near future but not at all confident of that

 

[Derrrpp]

Our state's medical cannabis program, as it currently stands, is a joke. It's prohibitively expensive ($200 annual fee in addition to meds that cost, I've heard, up to 5X as much as the black market? Ridiculous.) and the list of approved conditions is, frankly, too short. And WTF is up with not allowing it in flower form?

Anyway, you're right @MinnBobber, adding intractable pain is certainly a step in the right direction, a no-brainer... It would benefit many people. Even if it is added, more things still need to change (like the too-high prices). But baby steps first, I guess.

I unfortunately can't attend the meeting, but I just found out I can submit my comments in written form. In case anyone else is interested in doing this, the link to the form can be found here.

 

[MinnBobber]

Attention Minnesota vapers, the State Med Cannabis Advisory Comm meets tomorrow, 10/29 in St Paul at the Wilder Foundation from 1-3 to discuss Intractable Pain recommendation and if they will recommend adding it to the current skimpy list of eligible conditions.
Currently there are only about 500 patients signed up as our law really sucks.

Ohio must have copied our shitty law. If their law pass Nov 6(?), it will be tough to determine if their law or Mn's is worse

Derrrpp, thanks for submitting written comments. I'm doing "Chicago style" on this issue
Vote early and vote often..... I attended two meetings to give my verbal comments plus submitted written comments. The more they hear about the true med value of cannabis, the better.
Tomorrow's mtg will NOT allow public comments but I want to hear what the committee discusses and see which way they are leaning.
Gov't works SLOW---even if they rec adding intractable pain, it would be 3rd quarter of 2016 before it is implemented but it's a baby step forwrd.

Full rec cannabis is what every state needs --hope that comes

 

[MinnBobber]

Well, it took a big turn for the worse here in MN
- The Committee to make a recommendation on adding or not adding INTRACTABLE PAIN to the current tiny list of qualifying med cannabis conditions has completed their draft and now recommend NOT ADDING intractable pain.

I've been attending their mtgs and commenting but ignorance rules here. How can the medical professionals on this committee be so ignorant of cannabis medical properties as a little keyboard searching yields a ton of information. Yet their report is full of "potential dangers of cannabis".
So would that be like maybe sometime one person could possibly die from cannabis, since that has not happened yet???
But the real dangers of the current option for intractable pain, prescription painkillers, are fine, no need to consider cannabis as only 16,000 people die each year in US from prescription painkiller OD deaths.

And the FACT that in states with medical cannabis, their prescription painkiller OD deaths are DOWN almost 25% . People are dying out here and cannabis has proven in the real world that it saves lives!!

I am bummed
The next and final meeting to review the committee report is next Tues, November 10 at 4 PM in the W. St. Paul Wentworth library.

 

[Derrrpp]

Depressing news indeed.

Your phrase "ignorance rules here" -- I couldn't have said it better