Kentucky Legislators Discuss Medical Cannabis Bill

[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]A[/dropcap] bill that would allow medical practitioners to prescribe cannabis to patients was recently considered in a House legislative panel in Kentucky.

If passed, House Bill 136 would allow doctors to prescribe patients with certain medical conditions medical cannabis, and licensed growers and dispensaries would also be allowed to grow the plant in the state. However, HB-136 would not allow smokable cannabis and the amount of THC would be limited to 70 percent.

Cannabis advocates have reinforced the validity of the bill by stating that medical cannabis can help ease chronic pain and reduce addiction to opioids. However, opponents such as Douglas Oyler, who works as an assistant professor in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Kentucky, say that the scientific data available to support this claim is too limited to determine its legitimacy. “It’s a really complicated problem,” he states. “And this isn’t to say that increasing marijuana access might help—it could. But I don’t think that there’s really good causative data here to say that yes, we know that increasing access to this is going to reduce the number of individuals who take opioids for pain.” Chronic pain is a prominent medical condition for many people. Approximately 50 million Americans, or 20 percent of adults in the U.S., suffer from the condition, according to a September report conducted by the Centers for Diseases and Control and Prevention.

The legislation is sponsored by state Reps. Diane St. Onge and Jason Nemes. St. Onge said that the bill comes with conditions that would give employers the authority to not hire a potential employee with a medical cannabis card. “If an employer chooses to have a drug-free work zone, that is their privilege to do so,” she stated. “Now, if they have not indicated that in their policy, and someone is hired and they’re an employee, and then there’s an incident that happens, the employee has recourse, in the sense that this was not something they were aware of from the beginning.”