A Minnesota Senate committee has just passed a bill for the first time in a decade that will legalize the use of marijuana flower for medicinal use.
Proponents of the bill are optimistic that the Senate will give the bill full approval.
Speaking to 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS, Patrick McClellan has said he was surprised the bill had passed with a unanimous vote. It had passed the Senate’s Health and Human Services Finance and Policy Committee on March 1st.
“I could never have imagined that it would pass with a unanimous vote,” McClellan said. “I believe this is a historic moment in the Minnesota medical cannabis program, and it moves us one step closer to actually fixing what has been broken for years.”
Minnesota allows medicinal cannabis but only in pill or liquid form. Use of the marijuana flower or leaf is sitll illegal.
According to McClellan, allowing the use of the plant’s flower will make it cheaper to manufacture and easier for “thousands of Minnesotans to afford and enter the program.”
“I have to take nine additional medications, in addition to the medical marijuana pill, and it is very expensive and can be cost-prohibitive for many people,” McClellan said. “The flower will really open things up, and it will allow someone like me to get rid of the nine other pills I have to take.”
Senator Matt Klein, DFL- Mendota Heights, a physician who also sits on the Senate’s Health and Human Services Finance and Policy Committee, stated, “I do hear from my addiction medicine friends that there is no evidence to support this in the medical literature, so it is not an evidence-based approach. On the other hand, the testimony does have a point that the margin of toxicity in cannabis is extremely low and our burden of illness with opioid addiction is extremely high and very dangerous.”
