Anxiety May Soon Be A Qualifier For Minnesota’s Medical Marijuana
I've often wondered why, of all things, anxiety isn't on the list of conditions that would qualify a person for medical marijuana. It only seems natural that people suffering from anxiety would benefit greatly from the use of medical marijuana. Recently, smokable cannabis was added to the list of conditions that qualify, so there's hope for this.
According to Minnpost, ever since Minnesota legalized medical marijuana, the Minnesota Department of Health has not only received a few petitions requesting generalized anxiety be added to the list of qualified conditions to use medical marijuana., they have received many.
The director of the Office of Medical Cannabis, Chris Tholkes, said that Commissioner of Health, Jan Malcolm, would give her decision by the 1st of December. “Last year, the commissioner said she would decline it, but she said she doesn’t want to keep leaving people in the position that they have to keep petitioning us each year.”
The condition of general anxiety being added to the list of qualifying conditions has had an enormous amount of support in Minnesota, since the beginning of the Office of Medical Cannabis in 2015.
“Last year we were in the position where we got hundreds of comments from lay folks that said, ‘Yes, please add anxiety,’ and one letter from a psychiatrist that said, ‘Don’t do that,’” Tholkes said. “It left us with no real answers about what the medical community feels.”
The biggest stumbling block seems to be the reaction from the medical community. Many think that there has not been enough research done as to the affect marijuana would have in treating anxiety.
We'll just have to wait for the decision by the Minnesota Department of Health, sometime by December 1st.
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