Cristy Harding and Kathleen
Dunkelberger are thrilled the state House passed a medical marijuana
bill, but they both still have some issues with where the drug would be
available and costs associated with obtaining it.
Harding, an emergency room registered nurse from Turbotville, has lobbied for legalization of medical marijuana because her son has Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, a type of epilepsy. He also has autism, she said. Both afflictions are included in the House bill as conditions that can be treated with medical marijuana.
Other conditions in the bill include cancer, HIV/AIDS, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, glaucoma and chronic pain.
“The House added autism and sickle cell anemia,” Harding said. “They went through over a hundred amendments. A lot of them did fail. So, hopefully, the Senate agrees and leaves the conditions in.”
One of the problems with the legislation, though, is there are only 50 dispensary licenses available, divided among three regions. Each dispensary can operate up to three locations. The drug must be grown in Pennsylvania.
She’s more concerned about the requirement that a doctor or a pharmacist be on site at the dispensary. The doctor on site can’t be the one recommending the marijuana. The recommending doctor must be at a different location, such as a clinic or family physician’s office.
The Pennsylvania Medical Society pointed to data showing that in Colorado, barely 200 doctors have been issuing recommendations for marijuana use — roughly 1.5 percent of physicians in that state. Only 226 doctors in New York, a state with 79,000 physicians, are participating in the medical marijuana program.
“I don’t know, being in a rural area. I’m concerned whether there will be physicians willing to be on site,” she said. “It’s hard for me to imagine a doctor giving up his practice and that amount of money for the center.”
She said an earlier Senate version of the bill stated a registered nurse had to be on site.
Dunkelberger, 51, of Paxinos, a registered nurse certified as a cannabis nurse and in cannabis therapeutics by the American Cannabis Nurses Association, has a 23-year-old son with autism.
“The licensing fees are very high for the growers and dispensaries,” Dunkelberger said. “It’s going to prevent a lot of good people from getting involved in the business who have a genuine concern for people.”
She added, “Those fees are going to filter down to the patients.”
As written, the law will allow for 25 growers and processors of the drug, spread across the state. Growers, who face a set of restrictions, must pay $210,000 to the state in registration and application fees, plus $10,000 a year to renew the license.
Dispensaries will be charged $35,000 in registration and application fees, as well as $5,000 per year.
The state will also set a price ceiling that dispensaries may charge.
Dunkelberger also questioned the requirement of having a pharmacist or a physician at the dispensary.
“What physician is going to quit their practice to be at the dispensary?”
She said the bill prohibits smoking the marijuana for medical use and patients from growing their own. She doesn’t think allowing either would lead to abuse.
“I visited Colorado and California,” she said. “I visited patients who were growing their own.”
Dunkelberger said it will be interesting to see how much the medical marijuana will cost, and it won’t be covered by insurance.
A bottle of the oil costs $100 in neighboring states, Harding said. A bottle will last her son two or three weeks.
“I would like to see independent labs in Pennsylvania where people can take the cannabis, whether they’re buying from the dispensary or illegal growing it, to see what’s in it,” Dunkelberger said.
Dunkelberger said she was skeptical about marijuana’s medicinal uses until she began to research its effects to use in an intervention for a 20-something woman who was going to Dunkelberger’s home stoned for Bible study.
“I started researching to look for harmful effects and found many beneficial effects, for cancer, Crohn’s disease,” Dunkelberger said.
There still was an intervention.
“Obviously, we don’t condone using it if you don’t need it,” Dunkelberger said of marijuana.
In the intervention, she told the young woman the worst that could happen to her was she could get arrested.”
But she also pointed out to the woman that anyone who buys pot off the street doesn’t know what is in it. It could be laced with pesticides or it could have mold.
She and Harding applauded the work of other parents and the legislators who got the bill passed.
Dunkelberger also has been a Pennsylvania State Nurses Association keynote speaker around the state.
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