The drug deal went down the way they usually do – a quick exchange of cash for goods, and the user had his product, while the delivery man went on to his next drop-off. The big difference in this case was that the exchange of pot for cash was perfectly legal.
At the office of Dr. Anthony Hall in Lauderhill, George Douthitt of Pembroke Pines paid $53 for 250 mg of cannabis oil. Douthitt is one of just 374 people who have registered with the state’s Office of Compassionate Use since a limited medical marijuana law was passed in 2014.
At the time the law was being debated, proponents argued that, given the frequency of certain forms epilepsy and cancer, thousands of Floridians stood to benefit. State officials had no official estimate of how many Floridians could benefit from the law.
Douthitt has two major reasons for taking the oil, which is from a strain of marijuana low in THC, the chemical in cannabis that produces a high. When he was 16, Douthitt was helping move a 400-pound bathtub off a loading dock when it fell off and hit him in the back. The 63-year-old has had back trouble ever since, along with severe tremors. He needs two hands to swipe his credit card through a machine.
“Every muscle, every joint pulls in, and the shaking – I can’t take the shaking,” he said.
He started getting cluster headaches when he was 42. The recurring headaches are widely regarded as one of the most painful ailments known to medicine and are colloquially known as suicide headaches.
“I’ve been driving along when it starts and I’ll see a tree and just think-” Douthitt begins. “But then I tell myself I’ve got to live.”
He carries a pill bottle in his pocket with a mix of painkillers, Lithium, anti-depressants. But as he holds up the thin vial of cannabis oil, he says, “I’d like to just take this.”
Douthitt swears the oil works wonders for his pain. He said he ordinarily has about four back spasms a week, but has had just one since he started taking the oil a month and a half ago. He was the fourth person to register for the low-THC marijuana, but few others have followed suit.
“The qualifying conditions right now are extremely limited,” said Kim Rivers, CEO of Trulieve, the company that delivered the oil to the doctor’s office.
The 2014 state law legalizing low-THC marijuana allows it only for cancer, epilepsy and other seizure disorders.
A 2015 law allows people given a year or less to live to use any strain of marijuana, but Rivers says a part of the original law has turned that update into a cruel joke. Under the 2014 law, patients can only be referred for marijuana by a doctor who has seen them for 90 days.
“For terminal patients, this has been absolutely heartbreaking,” Rivers said, as patients whose pain could be eased by marijuana have died before being allowed access.
Removing that barrier to entry for terminal patients was “largely absent from the conversation,” said state Rep. Katie Edwards, D-Plantation, who sponsored the 2014 law with state Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach.
Edwards said that the medical community, and in particular the Florida Medical Association, was reticent to get involved in helping craft the law.
“There are a lot of physicians who think it’s bad medicine, that it hasn’t been studied thoroughly,” said Hall, the doctor who recommended marijuana for Douthitt. “And a lot of physicians are afraid and think the DEA will suspend or revoke their DEA number if they recommend it.”
“My DEA registration is still intact,” Hall added.
Inside the doctor’s office, in a small room with the long, paper-covered seat found in rooms like this one in doctor’s offices everywhere, Douthitt cracked open the vial and took a tiny droplet of cannabis oil in his mouth. A pungent, hempy aroma filled the room.
“We’re at the infancy of a new age of medicine,” Douthitt said.
Taking one drop a day, the oil will last Douthitt for two weeks.
But with few patients enlisted – and even fewer Florida doctors having gone through the eight-hour required course to become certified to recommend marijuana – only a handful of others are joining Douthitt in his daily dose of medical marijuana.
“It’s got to be the happy marriage of people knowing it’s out there and having physicians willing to recommend it,” Edwards said. “The problem has been getting physicians on board with it.”
A proposed state constitutional amendment on the November ballot would expand medical marijuana in the state to far more qualifying patients and make full-scale, high-THC marijuana available to patients who aren’t dying in the near term. That could mean a boom in would-be medical marijuana users, but it would still require doctors to recommend the treatment.
News Moderator: Katelyn Baker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Two Years In, Few Patients Participate In State Medical Marijuana Program
Author: Dan Sweeney
Contact: (954) 356-4000
Photo Credit: Steve Dipaola
Website: Sun Sentinel