New bill allows terminally ill patients to try marijuana; Utah would grow its own weed

Rep. Daw never disappoints. That is, we’ve learned that in the medicinal cannabis arena we can always count on him to advance proposals about which the state’s main actual patient groups like TRUCE have never been consulted, which never draw from about what’s already been learned in dozens of successful state medicinal cannabis programs, and which serve ultimately to keep “slow walking” the possibility of any real medicinal cannabis programs coming available to the Utahns we already know can benefit from them in any year soon.

And to paraphrase a famous presidential remark, here he goes again….

We haven’t fully analyzed his latest proposals (HB195 as mentioned in the article and HB25, another “cannabinoid research” related vehicle.

Further, as regular readers know, since TRUCE is a 501c3 organization, it’s not in our charter to directly urge passage or defeat of any particular bill.

However, we will be studying and analyzing this curious proposal and its promise or lack of same. At first glance, as per the representative’s usual tactics, it would appear to be another proposal with the potential to result in more delay and distraction – and there are some provisions which simply leave us confused about it’s true intent and intended method of operation (or whether it could actually operate in any meaningful way if enacted).

One thing that’s certain though, is that any help given would reach no more than a tiny fraction of Utah’s tens of thousands of patients who would qualify under any of the 29 state medical cannabis programs already established around the country (and in Washington, DC, Puerto Rico and Guam). Patients who have already been waiting years longer than any known reason for them to have already been waiting.

So. More to come as we wrap our heads around this bill – and another he’s introduced – and 2-3 others yet to come from him or others.

We also have to wonder why it takes so many separate bills to propose severely limited actions which – best case scenario – accomplish so little to advance bringing safe, legal and affordable access to Utah patients… …unless of course one goal is to make it harder to see the whole picture of the various agendas at play here.

Meanwhile, the Representative’s 2017 contribution to state law, the Cannabinoid Research Act, has generally not succeeded in advancing Utah-based cannabis medicine, and has provided little useful information as promised which would help gather “the science” for Utah and let us know if a program is “justified,” a question most people familiar with the best scientific literature on the subject already know the answer to.

That research law has, however led to legal charges against one physician involved in a private company set up to do a study, and has opened up questions about the company, the company’s principals and officials, and has raised methodological questions about the study itself. See: http://ift.tt/2CPFXQd for more information.

And we doubt that more of the same is any kind of answer Utahns are looking for. Watch this space as we get a fuller picture to share with you.

#MMJ #Daw #CompassionateUse #HB195 #UTpol #TRUCE

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