Minnesota to add pain patients to medical marijuana program

Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) Commissioner Dr. Ed Ehlinger announced the decision to add intractable pain, as defined in Minnesota law, to the list of qualifying conditions for which patients can legally access medical marijuana on Wednesday, while calling upon the state’s health care community to boost efforts to help patients deal with pain more effectively.

It’s also a drastic change for a highly restricted program that has struggled with low enrollment in the nine conditions that now qualify, leading to big costs for patients.

Even Democratic-Farmer-Labor Gov. Mark Dayton, who began his term as a medical marijuana skeptic, said Tuesday that including pain in the list of cannabis elibible decisions was the right one.

The pain has to be chronic and incurable, but it would only take a doctor’s diagnosis to get access to the state’s locally grown, lab-tested, medical grade pills and oils.

“The relative scarcity of firm evidence made this a hard decision”, Commissioner Ehlinger said. Intractable pain patients who become certified for medical marijuana use become eligible to receive medical cannabis on August 1, 2016.

It was not an easy decision, Ehlinger said, because there is little scientific proof that marijuana products help, but they likely will cause no greater harm to a patient.

Larson said her office will set up a process for adding more conditions for marijuana treatment. The timing of that opening has been in flux since medical marijuana use was approved in 2014.

But Wednesday’s decision goes against a recommendation from a panel of medical experts that Ehlinger himself assembled for advice.

A total of 23 states and the District of Columbia have passed medical marijuana laws thus far. We commend Commissioner Ehlinger and everyone else involved in taking this important step toward improving the lives of countless Minnesotans.

However, the law did give the health commissioner power to annually add conditions that can be treated with marijuana extracts.

Dozens of those would-be patients had urged for it to be approved, eyeing medical marijuana as a possible relief from never-ending headaches or constant pain from back surgeries or vehicle crashes.