In less than 24 hours, the Senate public health committee took one big step to expand Mississippi’s medical marijuana eligibility and another big step to limit access to the treatment.
The committee, a Republican-dominated coalition of 19 senators, heard expert testimony on Tuesday, Feb. 24, about the “Right to Try Medical Cannabis Act,” proposed by Rep. Lee Yancey, R-Brandon. The bill would allow doctors to petition for their patient to try medical cannabis treatment, even if they don’t have one of the qualifying illnesses.
Current Mississippi statutes specify around 20 conditions that qualify for medical marijuana, including cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder and Parkinson’s disease. The law has done a good job so far, Edney said, but a provision like the “Right to Try” would open treatment up to people who would greatly benefit from it but can’t access it now.
If the bill, which has already passed the House and heads to the floor of the Senate in the coming days, were to become law, primary care providers could ask State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney for permission to include their patient in a medical cannabis treatment program.
The petition would include a rundown of the patient’s medical history, an explanation of how medical cannabis might benefit them and an outline of the proposed treatment plan. Doctors would also have to explain why conventional treatment plans haven’t worked or wouldn’t apply to the patient.
Edney would review all of the applications and, as the sole decision-maker, approve or deny each petition within 45 days. He spoke in favor of the bill at the Tuesday hearing, telling lawmakers that the bill would benefit both patients and doctors.
“The problem we’re seeing is that hospice programs do not want to become certified providers, they don’t want to be on the list,” he said. “But they do, at times, see the need for medical cannabis services.”
This bill would allow care facilities to participate as needed in the state’s medical marijuana program, Edney told legislators, and it would likely save doctors time and money. Practitioners with only a few patients that might benefit from medical cannabis, he said, could submit individualized petitions in lieu of undergoing the licensing process.
Another provision of the bill, said Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, would extend the laws to out-of-state residents who seek medical marijuana treatment in Mississippi. Many Tennessee residents come to Mississippi for treatment in his district, he told the senators, and the bill would include them in the new law.
Mississippi has more permissive medical marijuana laws than its neighbors, particularly Tennessee and Alabama. Louisiana and Arkansas both have medical cannabis programs, but Mississippi’s program is more comprehensive and establishes higher limits for the amount of marijuana that patients can access.
The bill, which Edney said would make a significant difference in end-of-life care, passed the Senate committee unanimously and faces a vote before the full chamber.
In the wake of significant committee support for the “Right to Try” legislation, senators heard another medical marijuana bill on Wednesday afternoon. The bill, said committee chair Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, would allow terminally ill patients access to medical marijuana as they live out their last months in the hospital.
“It seems to me to be a variation on where we are in this Neverland of marijuana,” Bryan said, “where, best as I can tell, one of the most useful benefits of marijuana is dealing with the effects of chemotherapy or the pains of people in the last stages of their lives.”
Patients wouldn’t be allowed to smoke the marijuana in the hospital, Bryan told the lawmakers, and their caregiver would work in tandem with medical professionals to log the drug’s use in the chart. Compared to the “Right to Try” bill, which was voted out of the committee comfortably, legislators took issue with the idea of allowing marijuana into hospitals.
Sen. Angela Burks Hill, R-Picayune, the bill’s most outspoken critic in the meeting, said she felt that the bill could expose medical professionals to liability issues. Medical marijuana, she told the group, could interact negatively with many medications and pre-existing conditions, potentially causing a sick person more pain.
Other legislators, including Bryan and Sen. Chad McMahan, R-Guntown, pointed out that the legislation would only allow terminally ill patients, or those with less than 12 months to live, to access the drug in hospitals.
“My view is that if you’re terminally ill,” Bryan said, “you ought to have access to most anything you want.”
Other legislators took issue with the level of control they felt the government would exert over hospitals if the bill became law. Sen. Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, asked Bryan and the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Kevin Felsher, R-Biloxi, whether they could name any other drugs that hospitals were required to administer to patients.
England considered aloud an amendment that would authorize, but not require, hospitals to allow the use of medical marijuana, which Felsher shot down immediately.
“If we put ‘may’ in there, we might as well not have a bill,” he said. “We’re talking about people with less than 12 months left to live.”
In another attempt to make the bill more palatable to holdouts, McMahan proposed an amendment to limit the bill only to hospitals with a hospice unit. His amendment was voted down.
After more than half an hour of debate, Bryan called for a voice vote to determine whether the bill would join the “Right to Try” legislation for debate on the Senate floor. The vote was too close for him to call, so he counted raised hands.
The committee’s 17 voting members were split almost exactly in half. Eight senators voted in favor of the bill, and nine of them voted against it, marking a narrow defeat.
One of the senators made a motion to reconsider the bill, which could open it up to a second vote. That motion will be heard at the committee’s next meeting on March 3, Bryan said, opening an avenue for the bill to pass if a legislator who voted against it changes their mind.