Colorado House lawmakers have approved a Senate-passed bill to allow terminally ill patients to use medical marijuana in healthcare facilities such as hospitals—though advocates have warned that recent amendments to the measure undermine its original intent.
Weeks after advancing through the Senate, with amendments, the legislation from Sen. Kyle Mullica (D) cleared the House Health & Human Services Committee in a 10-2 vote on Thursday. It’s now been referred to the House Committee of the Whole before potentially moving to the floor.
Reps. Sheila Lieder (D) and Lisa Feret (D) are sponsoring the bill on the House side, and they made the case for the reform before the committee took public testimony on the latest version, which was revised in the Senate to make it so hospitals could voluntarily elect to allow cannabis usage, rather than face a statutory requirement to do so.
“This bill was brought to us from a patient perspective,” Lieder said on Thursday. “We want to ensure patients have a continuum of care when they are being treated in a hospital or health care facility.”
“There’s been a lot of stakeholdering on this bill in the Senate. Several amendments were passed in the Senate committee without opposition,” she said. “That really brings us to a good place with the hospitals—mainly that participation is not mandated and it’s permissive.”
Feret said the legislation “is a really great opportunity for people to have the autonomy to make a decision of how they want to spend their remaining days on this earth and how they want to treat their own pain and giving that autonomy to them.”
“Some of the amendments that came through softened it a little bit, and some people are unhappy that it softened,” she said. “But that is the beauty of policymaking a compromise in this building is that we try to get to a good place.”
Several advocates testified about those changes, arguing that making it hospitals would have the option—rather than a mandate—to allow medical cannabis use in their facilities would fundamentally undermine the intent of the reform.
Jim Bartell, the father of a young California patient who passed and who inspired the policy that’s become known as Ryan’s law in his home state and several others, urged committee members to go back to original language of the bill and “use the original language of ‘shall’ and ‘must’” so that it doesn’t create a patchwork network of health facilities that permit or prohibit medical cannabis use.
“For families like mine, this legislation is not theoretical. It’s part of ethical and compassionate care,” he said.
Ken Sobel, an attorney with the Cannabis Nurses Network, said the “mandate is critically important because it’s the time that is lost in looking for a facility that allows the use of cannabis that literally compromises the ability to be with your close and loving family member.”
“Changing ‘must’ or ‘shall’ to ‘may’ removes that core protection of Ryan’s law,” he said.
Lieder, one of the bill sponsors, said in response to the testimony that she had just learned about the amendments that advocates are opposing. So while she moved to report the legislation out favorably, she said she will “gladly continue to work” with colleagues to address the issue.
Under SB 26-007, health facilities would be permitted to develop guidelines for the use, storage and administration of medical marijuana.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) would be prohibited from requiring compliance with the policy as a condition of obtaining or renewing a license or certification under the bill. Health facilities would be allowed to suspend the policy change if they risked enforcement action by a federal agency.
“In FY 2026-27, workload in the Health Facilities and Emergency Medical Services Division in CDPHE will minimally increase to conduct outreach and education to licensed health care facilities regarding medical marijuana use,” a fiscal impact analysis says. “The department may also require legal services, provided by the Department of Law, related to rulemaking and implementation. This workload can be accomplished within existing appropriations.”
Other amendments adopted in the Senate add additional compliance language, clarify that health facilities wouldn’t be required to store or dispense medical cannabis and limit legal liability for health institutions that permit medical marijuana use.
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Meanwhile in Colorado, the state saw over $1 billion in marijuana sales—a milestone the governor touted in December.
Gov. Jared Polis (D) also said last month that his state should not have joined a lawsuit supporting the federal ban on gun ownership by people who use marijuana that recently went before the U.S. Supreme Court—and he personally opposes the state attorney general’s “legal position on this.”
Photo courtesy of Max Jackson.
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