A congressional hearing took place on Tuesday where lawmakers and advocates for veterans talked about proposals.
Officials at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are against a series of bills that are designed to protect VA benefits for veterans who use marijuana.
T
hey are also against allowing the department’s doctors to recommend medical cannabis and expand research into the plant’s therapeutic potential.
“This is the first time we’ve had a hearing like this with a substantive committee,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) remarked. “One of the great tragedies of our time is the failure to adequately address the needs of veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan… An overwhelming number of veterans tell me that cannabis has reduced PTSD symptoms [and] the dependency on addictive opioids.”
Blumenauer was the one who introduced the Veterans Equal Access Act.
Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA) said, “It’s time to make sure that veterans get to know what cannabis is good for and what cannabis is not good for. We need medical research. We owe our veterans a tremendous amount. The least we can do is make sure we’re giving them the proper treatment for those invisible wounds that they brought back from the battlefield.”
Keita Franklin, the national director of suicide prevention in the VA’s Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, said the department opposes all of the cannabis bills.
“Any trial with human subjects must include an evaluation of the risks and safety and include the smallest number of participants to avoid putting subjects at increased risk unnecessarily so,” she said. “For these reasons, we don’t support this proposed legislation.”
