Drug or medicine

Drug or medicine

New York state expands Medical Marijuana Program

The state of New York announced on August 30, 2016, the implementation of new recommendations to its Medical Marijuana Program, which includes home delivery of cannabis and authorizing nurse practitioners to certify patients for the program.

PanARMENIAN.Net - The program, which saw its first dispensaries open in January, has struggled to gain broad traction in the medical community and with potential patients.

Marijuana is a name, used to describe the cannabis plant when it is dried for use as a psychoactive drug that causes changes in perception and sensation by altering the chemistry of the brain. Growing naturally in Central and South Asia, there are three main varieties of the cannabis plant: cannabis indica, cannabis sativa, and cannabis ruderalis. Marijuana has lots of slang names: weed, grass, pot, and ganja, Mary Jane, herb, bud, cheeba, Buddha, hydro, chronic, and Frankenstein, Northern Lights, Purple Haze and Maui Wowie.

Beyond its use as a recreational drug, marijuana is used to provide comfort to, and aid the digestive process of, terminally and chronically ill patients.

According to the International Buiness Times, the state’s Department of Health said that the new recommendations were a result of the statewide assessment and that the guidelines will improve the drug’s access for patients who are suffering from serious and life-threatening diseases including cancer, HIV and AIDS, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.

“We are constantly evaluating the program to make it more effective for patients and practitioners, and we believe that the implementation of these recommendations will do just that,” Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said in a statement.

The program currently boasts of 7,000 certified patients and 20 dispensaries.

When the program first took off, only certain registered doctors with special training were allowed to certify patients for the program. Now, nurse practitioners can also certify patients for the program. The state also allows a new home delivery system for patients who are too ill to visit a clinic. The state is planning on expanding financial aid and is considering allowing people suffering from chronic pain to use medical marijuana.

One of the a varieties of the Cannabis sativa plant is hemp or industrial hemp, which is used to make commercial and industrial products including rope, clothes, food, paper, textiles, plastics, insulation and biofuel. China produces more industrial hemp than any other country in the world. In Australia, individual states are licensing farmers to grow hemp for industrial purposes. Canada has permitted industrial hemp growing since 1998. France is Europe’s biggest producer of hemp. The United Kingdom has also recently begun licensing farmers to grow hemp. In both countries hemp is used as a bedding for farm animals amongst other things. In the United States, growing hemp is illegal.

The cost of the drug will not be addressed, though for those suffering from financial hardship, the state does intend to extend a waiver for a $50 registration fee. Unlike most medicines, marijuana is not paid for by insurance, so it is an entirely out-of-pocket cost for patients who are sometimes on disability and struggling to make ends meet; patients and providers say the cost of the drug can run anywhere from $200 to $1,000 a month.

Many artists and musicians throughout history have spoken about their own marijuana use.Shakespeare, considered by many to be one of the greatest writers of all time, mentioned a noted weed in one of his writings. A study of pipes dug up from the grounds of one of Shakespeare’s homes showed trace elements of cannabis.

According to the United Nations, marijuana is the most widely used drug in the world.

The governor’s counsel, Alphonso David, described the changes as legally prudent, made only after the state had sufficient information about how many patients were using the drug, which is still an illegal substance in the eyes of federal authorities. “We don’t want the federal government to come in and exercise an enormous amount of oversight and shut the entire program down,” Mr. David told the New York Times. “We’ve always been interested in expanding the program. We just wanted to make sure we had the data to support it.”

Lusine Mkrtumova / PanARMENIAN.Net
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