Pennsylvania’s state Medical Marijuana Advisory Board last month approved a new process for amending and expanding the state’s list of 21 serious conditions that allow patients to use medicinal marijuana as a treatment.
The Department of Health spokesman Nate Wardle said that in the next coming weeks, the board will begin to accept research-based petitions that ask for specific conditions to be added to the list.
There are tentative plans to discuss and vote on the first round of submissions during the board’s next meeting on February 1st.
“Pennsylvanians have been using marijuana illicitly for years to treat a wide variety of conditions not on the state list,” said Dr. Roxanne Rick of Cannabis Care Certification Centers.
“We definitely do get people calling us who we know would benefit from the medical marijuana, but they don’t fall into those 21 slots,” said Dr. Elizabeth Spaar of Spectrum Family Practice. She added, “Anxiety is a common one. It’s pretty well-established that marijuana is very helpful for treating anxiety, but it is not a qualifying condition, and so if they don’t have another qualifying condition to go along with it, we can’t offer it to them, which is extremely frustrating.”
