Freeman Klopott
New York governor Andrew Cuomo, fresh off sealing a deal with legislators on a $137.9 billion (R1.4 trillion) budget, now confronts a battle over medical marijuana.
After at least four Republican senators signalled support, the state legislature is poised to pass a bill creating a medical marijuana programme that would monitor the plant from seedling to sale. Cuomo, a Democrat, instead wants to use an executive order to revive a 1980 law that created a marijuana research programme run by hospitals.
His plan, which limits marijuana to patients approved by the Health Department, does not allow the cannabis plant to be grown in New York.
“I applaud the governor, but I do think you need a comprehensive plan that this legislation works toward,” said Joseph Robach, a Rochester Republican who supports the medical marijuana bill.
The measure, called the Compassionate Care Act, would make New York the 21st US state to allow doctors to prescribe marijuana.
The Democrat-led state assembly has repeatedly passed it, only to have it die in the Republican-controlled Senate. A February poll by Quinnipiac University found that 88 percent of New York voters support legalising marijuana for medical use.
The shift in the Senate started that same month after WGRZ, a Buffalo television station, aired a story on Anna Conte, an 8-year-old with Dravet syndrome, a form of epilepsy. The disease can cause hundreds of seizures a day starting in infancy, and an oil derived from pot has been shown to be an effective treatment, according to the Epilepsy Foundation.
The report described a plan by Anna’s mother, Wendy, to move with her daughter from western New York to Colorado, where marijuana is legal, and leave behind her husband, 15-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter. All four Republican senators who support the bill come from the region surrounding Anna’s home in Orchard Park, a Buffalo suburb.
The family travelled to Disney World in Orlando, Florida, last month on a Make-A-Wish Foundation trip for Anna. The child suffered a seizure at their hotel and her brother had to help her breathe with a respirator bag, Conte said. A mix of sedatives she took was not helping.
“These kids are dying, and every seizure wipes out brain cells and cognitive function,” Conte said. “She should be out playing with Barbies, and instead she’s in a drug-induced coma on the couch with the medications I can give her. It shouldn’t be a political issue.”
The Compassionate Care Act would allow the marijuana plant that can help with the seizures to be grown in New York and the oil derived from it to be distributed to children like Anna.
Cuomo has proposed reviving the 1980 law by having 20 hospitals prescribe marijuana to “monitor the programme and evaluate the effectiveness and the feasibility of a medical marijuana system”.
His plan would open the programme to patients with cancer, glaucoma and other illnesses who are approved by the Health Department.
“Medical marijuana, I understand the upside – I also understand the downside,” Cuomo said in January. “I’m not proposing a law, so it’s not the legislature telling me what I have to do, and that gives me great comfort because if it goes bad, we can correct or improve all within our own control.” – Bloomberg