New York state is about to expand its medical marijuana program to help better meet patient need and improve accessibility.
The state’s new policies were recommended by the Department of Health
and will include things like home delivery and doubling the number of
companies that can provide the substance. The
New York Times reports that the policy changes are expected to be announced on Tuesday.
Advocates of medical marijuana have previously criticized New York’s
program for being too limited. “We’ve always been interested in
expanding the program,” Alphonso David, Governor Cuomo’s counsel, told
the
Times. “We just wanted to make sure we had the data to
support it.”
Most of the Health Department’s recommendations will go
into effect right away. Home delivery, for one, will likely be
implemented by the end of September.
Kassandra Frederique, the state director at the Drug Policy Alliance’s New York office, told the
Times
that patients have been asking for a lot of these changes for the past
year and a half. Many of the new policies will make life easier for
patients who use medical marijuana.
There are currently only five firms in New York
that are permitted to sell the drug. The state plans to grow that
number to 10 so that patients hopefully won’t have to travel as far to
find a dispensary. Home delivery will help those who have difficulty
traveling at all.
Nurse practitioners will now be
allowed to certify patients for medical marijuana use. Some doctors are
hesitant to recommend the drug, or even refer a patient to someone who
can, because marijuana is still a Schedule I drug
by federal standards. Expanding the role of nurse practitioners will hopefully alleviate that problem.
Additionally, New York plans to add more conditions to the list of those that qualify a patient for medical marijuana
use. As of now, it can only be recommended to someone with cancer,
AIDS, or epilepsy. The state is expected to expand its list of
qualifying illnesses to include PTSD and similar mental health issues,
and conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.
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