Greenbelt, MD – A recent poll by the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that 76% of clinicians believe in the medical benefits of marijuana, but an extremely slow rollout process in Maryland is keeping many patients from attaining the legal treatment they need.
It’s been more than 900 days since former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley signed the bill legalizing medical marijuana in the state, and patients are still without their prescriptions.
Now, they must skirt the law in order to treat themselves.
Dispensaries are scheduled to open during the coming summer, but ongoing legal battles have many patients worried that their wait will only be extended.
One Maryland legislator, Cheryl Glenn, thinks Maryland’s medical marijuana commission is “jacked up” and needs revision. Glenn is a state delegate representing Baltimore who said he thinks the commission lacks diversity and that its licensing process for growers and distributors was neither efficient nor transparent enough. “We can do better and we will do better,” Glenn said during a recent panel. Only 15 grower licenses and 15 processor licenses were issued in August, numbers which Glenn has expressed frustration with. Glenn claimed that the current licensing process was not transparent, and that it didn’t incorporate enough diversity into the community.
She explained that the goal of her new bill will be to require more oversight of the commission and to incorporate more diversity in it. “The days of old white men in the smoke-filled back room making decisions are over,” she said. However, Glenn’s bill could make medical marijuana patients wait even longer to fill their prescriptions.
Medical officials and government officials alike have stated that the last thing they want to do is distress patients, but patients are already in distress without their medication.
Many medical marijuana patients have had to turn away from the law for treatment, but with any luck, the legal battles will help expedite the process rather than lengthen it.