Lang defends his bill
Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Rep. Lou Lang has penned an op-ed in favor of his medical marijuana bill…
Under the proposed four-year pilot program, Illinois patients would be prohibited from growing their own marijuana and would be limited in the amount of marijuana they could receive. Qualified patients would have to receive certification from their own physician with whom they have a “bona fide” physician-patient relationship. The physician must attest that the patient is suffering from a specified illness or condition, defined in the legislation, and would receive therapeutic benefit with treatment. The patient’s medical history would be turned over to the Illinois Department of Public Health, which would issue the patient an ID card, only if it verifies the information. All patients and caregivers would have to submit to background checks and convicted felons would be prohibited from obtaining an ID card.
The ID card would allow the patient, or licensed caregiver, to purchase a limited amount per month from one of up to 60 state-licensed dispensaries, or medical cannabis outlets, dispersed throughout the state. It would also: limit a dispensary’s location to certain industrial and commercial zones; prohibit them near schools, playgrounds, parks, libraries, churches, and other dispensaries; regulate hours and security, equipping them with 24/7 surveillance cameras; and prohibit on-site medical consultations. The state would track sales to monitor who’s buying medical marijuana and how much and oversee how much marijuana physicians recommend to their patients.
Up to 22 competing state-licensed cultivation centers operating separately from the dispensaries would grow marijuana and distribute an affordable product to the dispensaries. These secure facilities would be monitored with 24/7 cameras and grow only a specific number of strains to ensure patient safety and quality that law enforcement could easily track and determine if it was prescribed for medical use. The state would require the cultivation centers to employ state-of-the-art testing methods to produce controlled quality-controlled marijuana and cultivated to most effectively treat specific illnesses. All products would be tested and labeled accordingly, listing the active ingredients and their amounts to ensure safe dosage.
* This is definitely not a California type law, which is very nearly de facto recreational use. The sorts of illnesses that medical marijuana can be prescribed to treat are very limited. The complete list…
(1) cancer, glaucoma, positive status for human immunodeficiency virus, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, hepatitis C, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, agitation of Alzheimer’s disease, cachexia/wasting syndrome, muscular dystrophy, severe fibromyalgia, spinal cord disease, including but not limited to arachnoiditis, Tarlov cysts, hydromyelia, syringomyelia, Rheumatoid arthritis, fibrous dysplasia, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury and post-concussion syndrome, Multiple Sclerosis, Arnold-Chiari malformation and Syringomyelia, Spinocerebellar Ataxia (SCA), Parkinson’s, Tourette’s, Myoclonus, Dystonia, Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, RSD (Complex Regional Pain Syndromes Type I), Causalgia, CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndromes Type II), Neurofibromatosis, Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy, Sjogren’s syndrome, Lupus, Interstitial Cystitis, Myasthenia Gravis, Hydrocephalus, nail-patella syndrome, or the treatment of these conditions; or (2) any other debilitating medical condition or its treatment that is added by the Department of Public Health by rule as provided in Section 45.
Some might say that the bill is just too restrictive. I wouldn’t argue. But, as Democratic as Illinois is, it ain’t totally liberal. Baby steps are in order.
Whatever the case, absolutely nobody can truthfully say that Illinois will be another California or Colorado if this bill becomes a law. You won’t be able to just pop by some 420 friendly doc and tell him that you’re depressed and immediately get a quickie weed script. Not gonna happen.
- Chavez-respecting Obamist - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 11:56 am:
I don’t know Rich. You don’t know the doctors I know.
- Kasich Walker, Jr. - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 12:02 pm:
What about the children? Bad laws break up families and short cut careers.
I’d like to see Illinois leaders support legislation that allows healthy adults to grow, buy, sell, or use cannabis.
Adults in Illinois shouldn’t have to get sick to keep from getting locked up or fined if they prefer cannabis over or in addition to alcohol.
- Stones - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 12:14 pm:
Anyone who has watched a relative, friend or loved one suffer from the effects of cancer treatment (or another condition) would have a hard time justifying why a form of medical marjuana should not be provided.
- wordslinger - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 12:20 pm:
I’d rather leapfrog the issue and go the Washington or Colorado route. Let farmers make money, not gangsters.
Hard to believe that Arizona has medicinal marijuana and Illinois doesn’t.
- Rich Miller - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 12:39 pm:
===You don’t know the doctors I know. ===
I also know that you didn’t read either the op-ed or the bill. There are several checks and balances.
- anon for a reason - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 12:41 pm:
Agree with Wordslinger.
Over 80% of the Mexican cartel profits come from marijuana sales. I believe street murders would decline.
Let the farmers grow it. Make hemp fuel.
How stupid are we?
- Geneva Guy - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 12:56 pm:
I agree there are checks and balances, it aint totally liberal, and it’s harder than California & Colorado.
Still, CRPS, RSD and fibromyalgia…excuse me “severe” fibromyalgia…that’s where a customer-oriented MD and a motivated patient can game the system. I say just legalize, regulate, tax, collect and move on.
- Jeff Trigg - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 1:20 pm:
We should call it cannabis. Marijuana is a racist, yellow journalism term created by Hearst to protect his forestry profits while painting a link between cannabis and those dirty non-Europeans.
This proposal is wrong on so many levels it is hard to care whether or not it passes. If they are going to be this controlling and strict, they may as well just do exactly what the feds are doing with federal pilot program that has been sending patients 300 joints a month since 1978.
A severely poor patient is not allowed to grow their own? Come on, have a heart, some of these people will be too sick to hold down a regular job and will be poor. Let them grow a couple dozen plants.
Background checks? Why? A ban on ex-felons? Why? Do we do that for Vicodin or valium or any other more dangerous opiates? That just isn’t necessary.
22 cultivation centers. And none of them will be politically connected or “mobbed up”? Let the patients grow their own and provide for other patients so they reap the “profits” from a medical cannabis program, instead of creating a monopoly where only up to 22 corporations will receive the cash. Looks like a greedy power grab waiting to happen, at the expense of the sick and diseased.
Medical histories collected by the state to issue state ID cards? Again, do we do this with the pain killers and muscle relaxants and steroids and opiates that are prescribed everywhere, every day right now?
This whole thing is overkill and too much of a compromise to those folks that still believe cannabis is any worse than alcohol. Too bad we don’t have initiative and referendum powers for our citizens cause I’d love to see a statewide vote on better program than this.
Kentucky looks like they may beat us to the industrial hemp market. Paper, car door panels, oil, feed, textiles, etc. We import hemp from Canada right now. We need those jobs and that income here.
- Plutocrat03 - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 1:47 pm:
The louder folks talk about this bill not being about recreational use, the more I am convinced that that is the ultimate goal.
Just make sure you put a system in place to protect the general public from the new batch of impaired drivers.
- dupage dan - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 2:32 pm:
=== I believe street murders would decline ===
Legalizing or medicalizing marijuana is not going to reform gang members into model citizens. These are clever folks. They will find another way to make money illegally.
It’s. What. They. Do.
Fibromyalgia is the clue that this law can be gamed. Difficult illness to diagnose and anybody can claim to have the symtoms which will be hard to refute. Baby steps? To what? Full legality? Why the charade, then.
- Small Town Liberal - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 2:47 pm:
- new batch of impaired drivers. -
Your argument is that there are hordes of people perfecly willing to ignore impaired driving laws that are currently unwilling to break marijuana laws? I’ll have whatever you’re smoking.
- Grandson of Man - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 2:53 pm:
==Anyone who has watched a relative, friend or loved one suffer from the effects of cancer treatment (or another condition) would have a hard time justifying why a form of medical marjuana should not be provided.==
I couldn’t agree more. I have seen this firsthand. People can die from overdosing on the pain medicine that’s legally prescribed, but they can’t get medical cannabis, which never kills anyone directly.
==Just make sure you put a system in place to protect the general public from the new batch of impaired drivers.==
The law that Lang is proposing is pretty strict. As far as impaired drivers, there are plenty of those on the road now. I would like to say, respectfully, that it’s time for the ostriches among us to pull their heads out of the sand and realize–finally–that the drug war is lost. We should be thinking of novel or different ways to combat drug abuse. I think we should treat drug abuse as a medical problem and treat addicts instead of incarcerating them.
- anon for a reason - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 3:36 pm:
Pot is accepted by the main street public.
Some people turn into addicts.
Putting users in jail … does not work … and hurts law enforcement by reducing the legitimacy of law enforcement.
I agree with Grandson.
Solutions please.
- Boone Logan Square - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 4:17 pm:
Legalize and tax it.
- Grandson of Man - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 4:40 pm:
I didn’t mean to be dismissive of impaired drivers. I do support laws that penalize DUI. Colorado’s House just passed a marijuana DUI law, which if enacted, will penalize those who have “5 nanograms” of THC in their blood. That level of THC is said to cause intoxication.
There could be a problem with such a law if the offending THC level remains in the blood beyond the time of intoxication, so I would rather support a law that includes other factors, such as the manner of driving, smelling marijuana smoke in the car, observing the offender smoking while driving, etc. I do want to consider the rights of others who don’t smoke marijuana.
Keeping marijuana illegal, though, is not discouraging people from driving under its influence. I’d rather that we eventually legalize it and use some of the tax revenue toward better policies to protect society from the harm of drug abuse.
- hisgirlfriday - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 4:42 pm:
I’m very supportive of medical marijuana but this legislation sounds completely AWFUL.
If the state wants to say marijuana is medicine, then get off the doctors’ backs and let them prescribe whatever medicine they think will help their patients. And also, if marijuana is medicine, then let the patients grow their own marijuana and keep a plant or two at home rather than having to go through these state-sanctioned dispensaries. And also, if marijuana is medicine, then why can’t a convicted felon have that type of medicine? I mean do we ban convicted felons from having access to morphine if they have bad enough pain?!?! Because morphine is illegal when you take it for non-medical reasons too, yet for some reason we still let criminals have access to it if there’s a medical need. This is almost as needlessly cruel as that Tennessee legislation that just was introduced to take away the food stamps of parents if their kids don’t get good enough grades.
Then there’s the insane amount of money and awful bureaucratic red tape involved in enforcing this legislation. Does anyone believe that Illinois has the money to police this or regulate it the way that this is set up? Because I seem to recall the state just having to double medical license fees just to be able to have the money to staff IDFPR’s medical licensing department at all. Yet IDFPR is going to be equipped to do all this? Puhleeze.
And then you have the “state-licensed” dispensaries and the “state-licensed” cultivation centers. Is there any reason to believe those won’t be clouted up beyond belief and just going to the politicians’ friends and family members?
I understand the need to avoid the pitfalls of the California medical marijuana law, but this just seems to create a different set of problems.
- hisgirlfriday - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 5:00 pm:
I think you are joking Jeff, but I happen to think Illinois instituting a state version of the Compassionate Investigational New Drug Program would be better than both this proposed legislation and what California has done in terms of medical marijuana.
The U of I could do some groundbreaking and important medical marijuana research through its bioengineering department and ACES while it grows the stuff for the state’s medical marijuana program on its own farm the way that the University of Mississippi does for the feds.
That seems a lot more productive use of state dollars than hiring people to administer special background checks of doctors who prescribe marijuana or hiring people to comb through the medical and criminal records of prospective medical marijuana patients.
- Sandy - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 5:16 pm:
No matter how one feels about cannabis, this bill is much needed even if it isn’t perfect.. just yet. We have to take small steps and accept that this is much better than what we have now, which is absolutely nothing.
I, as a caretaker of one of our service connected veterans need a safe place to go and buy this product. I need to know that when I buy this product for my husband, that I am buying a quality, medicinal grade product that will work for him. When one goes to the streets, you not only risk your life, you risk that maybe what you are buying isn’t quality and may be tainted with who knows what? Not to mention being caught and arrested. Who will take care of my loved one if I’m sitting in jail? Or worse, if I am shot or robbed or hurt in any way? I assure you, where I go all that can happen and drive by’s are not unusual. To add, I am being taxed by the drug dealers. Yes, they are hit by the economy too and taxing our product. I couldn’t believe it. So, costs is always different depending on where you go.
My husband used to take 59 pills a day for his ms. Now he’s down to 24 and many of those are vitamins. No one can tell me this product does not work. Jim’s hands and legs crimp up so badly he can’t move. But a few puffs of cannabis and he’s able to open his hands and legs. Guys, could you sit comfortably with your legs crimped shut?
My point is, this product works for so many and is needed badly here in Illinois. And while this bill may not be perfect, no bill ever is, it’s going to be one of the strictest of the nation. And it’s a four year pilot, meaning in time we can try to add and subtract and make it a better law. We need to start thinking about healing and less about the things wrong in the bill. What do we have now? NOTHING.
- Sandy - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 5:38 pm:
@Jeff, You said: ~~~Medical histories collected by the state to issue state ID cards? Again, do we do this with the pain killers and muscle relaxants and steroids and opiates that are prescribed everywhere, every day right now?~~~
Actually, yes, the state of Illinois is doing that. Jim uses hand controls and has to pass a stringent drivers test and road test at renewal. During renewal, he also has to submit a doctors recommendation that he is able to drive and list any and all medication he is on. This information is entered into the database. Rest assured, he’s never been targeted or pulled over.
- Chavez-respecting Obamist - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 5:38 pm:
Actually I did read the bill Rich. I also know a doctor who gave someone a handicapped parking placard because she’s somewhat deaf in one ear.
- Craig DeCaluwe - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 6:40 pm:
I hope it passes, I am tired of seeing my wife suffer pain while trying to use the meds that are available today. They either affect her heart or are hard on her liver while delivering poor results. This is a medicine much less caustic to her body with much better results. Please help her!
- Wiz - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 7:16 pm:
MS patients are able to be prescribed very strong medicines for managing symptoms. Many of them have undesirable side effects. Some of them are addicting such as amphetamines to help fight fatigue. Those are considered controlled substances and are tightly controlled and never given more than thirty days worth of medicine, This could easily be done with medical marijuana. The controls are in place, this needs to be available to MS patients and others who have pain or other symptoms that can be relieved with treatment.
- Just The Way It Is One - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 7:17 pm:
It’s a sound, fair bill and its’ passage is SO long overdue. Since Lou keeps suffering regular setbacks on his Casino efforts as a lawmaker(although I’m reading that positive strides in the right direction are being made so long as they ditch the new, last-second, unnecessary gumming up of the works “Internet gambing permission” addition), his struggle for THIS MUCH-needed law in Illinois should finally and hopefully come to fruition soon so that those suffering without this assistance can suffer LESS! Now is that a concept that is really so hard for a majority of the Legislature to approve of?!!!
- dan linn - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 7:49 pm:
Sick people should not be criminals and trying to draft a bill that can navigate the conflict of the federal scheduling with providing patients safe and legal access can be difficult, especially with all the lawyers in Illinois. CA style medical cannabis is consistent with how doctors can write off label prescriptions but something with a safety profile like cannabis shouldn’t require a doctor, just like one does need a script for echinacea and st johns wart. Plus the FDA isn’t designed to regulate botanicals, hence the label on the herbal supplements at the pharmacy.
Sam Bronfman and Seagrams are an example of a bootlegging “gangster” going legit when the market became legal once again.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 8:10 pm:
This is something that MUST happen! Prohibition MUST end! Things that scare us have to be dealt with! The time is NOW for action! The time is NOW to help the elderly, sick, dying, and disabled! The time is NOW to have this come to the floor and make Illinois History!
- tom - Wednesday, Apr 3, 13 @ 4:48 pm:
I think it’s ridiculous to say that a convicted felon with a serious illness would be banned from such treatments. It just goes to show how naive the person writing this bill is. They would have access to more harmful drugs like oxycontin, vicadin, and other legally scripted drugs but not this plant. you got a long way to go with your line of thinking here.
- CarrollCounty - Thursday, Apr 4, 13 @ 7:53 am:
“If they are going to be this controlling and strict, they may as well just do exactly what the feds are doing with federal pilot program that has been sending patients 300 joints a month since 1978.”
This is typical big government Illinois. A high level of control, and perfect setup for new lobbyists to advocate for additional diseases one at a time. Perfect for their friends working for billable hours.
In other words, a lawyer-workplace-improvement bill.