Medical marijuana has long been an either welcomed or shunned idea as treatment for medical conditions.
At Thursday’s Greenville Rotary Club meeting, Jamie Grantham, Communications Director for the Medical Marijuana 2020 Campaign, provided extensive insight about medical marijuana and the benefits to be had if legislation makes it on to the 2020 Mississippi general election ballot.
Medical Marijuana 2020 is a campaign to make medical marijuana available to Mississippians who have debilitating medical conditions in a legal and safe manner.
“Why Medical Marijuana?” Grantham posed. “To ease the suffering of those with debilitating medical conditions.”
Those conditions, Grantham said, are ones that people are born with or diagnosed with later in their lives and are incurable, cause a great deal of suffering and have to be lived with.
Even though there are several other states who have implemented medical marijuana programs, many of which that have yielded success in patient treatment, the Mississippi Legislature has been somewhat reluctant to get on board in past years.
One woman and her daughter, in large parts, have been responsible for getting the needle moving in legislation for medical marijuana — Ashley Durval and daughter, Harper Grace.
Durval filed the medical marijuana initiative with the Secretary of State.
Grantham explained how Durval played such an integral role in getting the process off the ground and also serving as an example of how slow the process has gone.
When Harper Grace was an infant at 6 months old, she began having seizures, as many as 20-30 a day, some lasting up to an hour.
After undergoing a series of tests in order find out what was causing the seizures, Harper Grace was diagnosed with Dravet Syndrome — a rare genetic dysfunction of the brain or epilepsy that begins in the first year of life in an otherwise healthy infant.
“Durval worked with Senator Josh Harkins and they were able to get Harper Grace’s law put into place,” Grantham said.
Harper Grace’s Law provides that people with epileptic disorders can have access to CBD oil or cannabidiol, through University of Mississippi Medical Center.
Grantham then inserted the fact that CBD is one of over 100 different cannabinoids found in the marijuana plant, and is just one of the plant compounds.
In 2014, the bill was signed into law and Harper Grace was just two years old at the time.
“Harper Grace is now 7 and she’s never gotten any of the medicine,” Grantham said.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center just started a pilot program and are in the second round of it.
The program, according to Grantham, consists of roughly 10 or 12 patients who were selected to participate.
Harper Grace, however, has not been selected because she isn’t sick enough right now and therefore does not have any access to the medicine.
The silver lining seems to be the fact that Mississippi has a ballot initiative process.
“Not all states have a ballot initiative option,” Grantham said. “But Mississippi is one state that does and for several years in a row, medical marijuana tried to be put before the legislature and it didn’t make it to the floor for a vote, so it’s not something they’re gonna touch or do anything with.”
Grantham explained Mississippi’s Ballot Initiative process allows citizens to directly amend the State Constitution.
According to Grantham, the medical marijuana initiative is polling at 77% across Mississippi, in favor of a medical marijuana program in Mississippi that is strictly regulated through the Mississippi Department of Health and a physician for people who are suffering from debilitating medical conditions.
If approved by Mississippi voters, the proposed amendment to make medical marijuana available to Mississippians who have debilitating medical conditions, would allow physicians to certify medical marijuana for patients with debilitating medical conditions and then allow those patients to obtain medical marijuana in a legal and safe manner from treatment centers licensed and regulated by the Mississippi Department of Health.
Grantham emphasized the leg work that had to be done to attain congressional district support.
“The campaign spent 12 months gathering signatures from all over the state,” she said.
The required amount of signatures is 86,185 certified signatures from Mississippi registered voters and roughly 20,000 more than the required amount (105,686) was submitted to the Secretary of State.
If approved by voters, patients who are suffering will be able to obtain medical marijuana after they are examined by Mississippi-licensed physicians and certified to use medical marijuana.
The Mississippi Department of Health will regulate the process by which medical marijuana is grown, processed and made available to patients.
The actual language that will appear on the ballot in November 2020 reads, “Should Mississippi allow qualified patients with debilitating medical conditions as certified by Mississippi licensed physicians to use medical marijuana?”
The campaign has a steering committee comprised of 70 various people, influential Mississippians from all sectors — medical and healthcare professionals, religious leaders from the community, law enforcement, veterans, business owners and leaders of boards and associations.
Mississippi would be joining 34 other states that have medical marijuana programs.
“Over 3,000,000 Americans across the country are receiving relief from medical marijuana programs in their state,” Grantham said.
Grantham also displayed a list of qualifying debilitating medical conditions as to provide further insight and examples of what qualifies as a debilitating medical condition, which include cancer, epilepsy or other seizures, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, PTSD, ALS, sickle cell anemia and several others that people have to live with daily.
Grantham went into detail about the benefits medical marijuana has provided for veterans and others who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
“We included PTSD because some of the key things, specifically our veterans, suffer from with PTSD is sleep deprivation, recurring nightmares, flashbacks hyper vigilance and fear,” she said.
“I got to speak with some of the veterans who have been able to use medical marijuana in place of the heavy medications they were getting from the VA and it’ll bring tears to your eyes.”
Grantham said those veterans have their quality of life back are able to re-acclimate, sleep and more.
The CAPS, occasionally referred to as the gold standard in PTSD assessment, was designed to be administered by clinicians and clinical researchers who have a working knowledge of PTSD, but can also be administered by appropriately trained paraprofessionals.
According to ptsd.va.gov, the CAPS-5 is a 30-item structured interview that can be used to make current (past month) diagnosis of PTSD, make lifetime diagnosis of PTSD and assess PTSD symptoms over the past week.
“One study indicated that PTSD patients reported an average of 75% reduction in CAPS score while using cannabis,” Grantham shared.
“Twenty-two veterans commit suicide across the U.S. everyday,” she added. “For some conditions, it is an alternative to opioids with fewer side effects.”
Grantham also shared research that found 210 Mississippians died from opioid overdoses in 2018.
“Mississippi is one of the highest ranked in the opioid overdoses in death rate in the country and many states are urging physicians to consider medical marijuana in place of opioids,” Grantham said.
In addition, Grantham shared states with medical marijuana laws had a 24.8% lower average annual opioid overdose death rate as compared to states without such laws.”
Grantham concluded her presentation by informing the club of the three ways the self built and self funded medical marijuana program is funded.
The first way, Grantham said, is fees for medical marijuana ID cards for the patients.
The second way is through fees for licenses for cultivators, processors, and retailers of medical marijuana.
Thirdly, she said, is through a fee collected on the purchases of the medical marijuana medication, but would not exceed the state’s sales tax rate.
The Mississippi State Department of Health will regulate medical marijuana.
The MSDH will be in charge of the licensing for the medical marijuana businesses and overseeing all of the rules and regulations for the entire program.
“The amendment also authorizes the Department of Health to borrow up to $2.5 million from the state treasury in order to implement the program,” Grantham said, noting it would be repaid by the program’s fees.
As far as the patient process goes, he or she would simply go to his or her doctor, have the conversation about medical marijuana medication and the doctor would perform an in person examination.
If the physician feels it would be helpful to the patient, the doctor could then issue a certification to the patient for up to 12 months, as well as exercise a shorter time period if he or she wishes, but not exceeding 12 months.
Physicians, however, are not required to certify.
Grantham said the patient would then provide a certification to the Department of Health, who would then issue the medical marijuana ID card to the patient and at that time, the patient information is also loaded into a state-wide realtime database that tracks all of the patient information and the purchases.
In addition, the information is linked with the marijuana treatment centers where the patients would go and purchase their medicine.
One Rotarian inquired as to whether cultivators and producers would be regulated by the Department of Health or the Department of Agriculture.
Grantham reiterated that while the Department of Health is able to work with the Department of Agriculture, it is the only regulatory agency for medical marijuana right now.
Another Rotary member asked what the delivery system would be for the medical marijuana (capsules, tablets, etc.).
Grantham said that there are many delivery methods and it varies depending on the patient’s preference, medical condition and symptoms that he or she is trying to alleviate.
Another inquiry was if a medicare drug plan or independent health insurance covered the drug.
“They certainly can, if they would choose to,” Grantham responded, “I don’t think any cover it right now but that would be up to them if they choose to do it.”
Grantham encouraged everyone to visit medicalmarijuana2020.com to learn more about the initiative.
