A Rhode Island House panel on Wednesday took testimony on a proposal that would allow terminally ill medical marijuana patients to use cannabis at healthcare facilities.
If enacted, the four-page bill—H 5630, from Rep. Susan Donovan (D) and nine co-sponsors—would require that certain healthcare facilities allow the use of medical marijuana by people expected to live a year or less with their current condition. Smoking and vaping cannabis products would not be permitted.
Facilities would need to set additional limits on how patients store and use medical marijuana “to ensure the safety of other patients, guests, and employees of the healthcare facility,” according to a legislative description of the measure.
The bill’s description section says its goal is to “support the ability of a terminally ill patient to safely use medicinal cannabis within specified healthcare facilities in compliance with” state law.
Members of the House Committee on Health and Human Services did not take formal action on the measure at Wednesday’s hearing, instead taking testimony and holding it for further study.
Donovan, the bill’s sponsor and chair of the committee, shared the story of a boy named Ryan, who was diagnosed with cancer and initially treated with opioids such as morphine and fentanyl, which made him constantly sleepy.
“He didn’t want to spend his last few weeks sleeping,” Donovan said. “Medicinal cannabis was suggested, but the hospital didn’t allow it. So he was moved to another [where] it was allowed, and the results were amazing. He was awake and alert and without pain and able to have conversations with his family and friends.”
Ryan’s family and others support H 5630, she said, because they “feel that all terminally ill patients should be able to have the same opportunity.”
One member of the panel, Rep. Michelle McGraw (D), asked whether allowing medical marijuana use could cause healthcare facilities to lose federal funding.
Donovan said that similar legislation has already been passed in eight other states, “and that is not an issue.” She said she would look up an explanation of why.
Rep. Marie Hopkins (R) asked why the bill defines terminal illness as having a prognosis of one year or less to live, claiming instead that “the standard medical definition is six months.”
Hopkins said the question was intended “not as a criticism of the bill itself, because I like the bill.”
Donovan said she would look into it and amend the measure’s language if necessary.
A representative of ACLU of Rhode Island said the group supports the proposal.
“We believe that this bill would provide terminally ill patients the care and relief they need, while also easing some of their symptoms,” they said.
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Ellen Lenox Smith, who co-directs the medical cannabis program at the U.S. Pain Foundation, a chronic pain nonprofit, also testified at the hearing.
“Now that [recreational marijuana]’s here,” in Rhode Island, she said, “we can’t get anybody to pay attention to medical patients anymore.”
She told lawmakers that similar legislation had been approved or introduced in more than a dozen other states. “This bill is all over the country,” she she, “and I’m feeling really good that people are very compassionate about this.”
To qualify for the protection, a patient would need to provide a care facility with their identification as well as a copy of either their medical marijuana card or a physician’s written recommendation for cannabis.
Notably, chemical dependency recovery facilities would not fall under the definition of “healthcare facility” for the purposes of the bill.
Donovan also noted at Wednesday’s hearing that the bill “would need to be amended so that places like the VA and the Veterans Home and the Eleanor Slater Hospital in Rhode Island would be exempt, because federal law classifies cannabis as a Schedule I controlled substance.”
The bill would also authorize facilities to suspend their allowance of medical marijuana use if the federal government takes certain regulatory or enforcement actions.
Meanwhile in Rhode Island, the three-member Cannabis Control Commission earlier this month approved the first set of rules establishing a framework for the state’s newly legal cannabis market.
Among other things, the rules, which take effect May 1, create new packaging and labeling requirements, outline the business-licensing process and set social equity licensing criteria. The state is eventually set license up to two dozen marijuana retailers, with six licenses reserved for social equity applicants.
State lawmakers in February, meanwhile, held a hearing on a reintroduced bill to exempt psilocybin from the state’s laws against controlled substances, legalizing possession and home cultivation for personal use.
“Psilocybin is effectively a natural compound that’s in a variety of mushrooms. It is non-toxic, non-addictive. It’s a natural compound,” sponsor Rep. Brandon Potter (D) said in opening remarks. “There’s an abundance of especially medical research that shows incredible effects for treating people with complicated PTSD, depression, severe anxiety, addiction—just an absolute abundance of medical research from leading medical research institutions.”
As for other drug policy developments in the state, late last year organizers cut the ribbon on the first state-sanctioned safe consumption site for illegal drugs in the United States. The facility—located in Providence—stems from a 2021 bill creating a pilot program for overdose prevention centers (OPCs) in the state.
While controversial, overdose prevention centers have been lauded by academics and harm reduction advocates as a promising way to reduce drug-related deaths and connect people with social services, including treatment for drug use disorders.
“People with substance abuse disorder are going to use,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley (D) said at the facility’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. “What’s different here is that they will use in a supervised fashion with medical professionals on staff so that they do not die, and then there will be services wrapped around.”
Researchers at Brown University will be following the developments.
“The goal is to identify how OPCs operate in the United States,” Brown epidemiology professor Brandon D.L. Marshall said in a university post about the project. “If they are working, what makes them particularly helpful for people? In what ways do they connect people to addiction treatment and care? How can they best be integrated into a community that’s been hard hit by the nation’s overdose crisis? Those are some of the things we’d like to tease out.”
Alcohol Industry Lobbies Congress To Regulate Hemp-Derived Cannabinoid Products
Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.
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