(C) South Dakota Searchlight
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State medical cannabis programs failing to make enough progress, advocacy group finds [1]
['Adam Goldstein', 'More From Author', '- February']
Date: 2023-02-03
WASHINGTON — A report from a patient advocacy group found the future of medical cannabis in the states is hazy unless costs are decreased, product safety standards are improved, and civil rights are strengthened for patients and prescribers.
Americans for Safe Access issued its annual State of the States report on Thursday. The organization, a nonprofit, has put out the document to advocates and state policymakers since 2014, as a tool to “assess and improve medical cannabis programs.”
ASA Executive Director Debbie Churgai said that one of the main surprise findings of this report was the lack of progress being made to strengthen and develop the medical cannabis sector.
“This was the first report that we saw the fewest improvements in the states,” Churgai said. “So much so that I felt a little shocked at first.”
The five states with the highest-graded medical cannabis access programs were Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Of the five, Maryland had the highest score, receiving a 75.7% on the group’s scale. South Dakota’s score was 57.29%, described as a “C” grade in the report.
ASA issued 13 failing grades to state medical cannabis programs: Texas, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The lowest-scoring states were Idaho and Nebraska, which both received a 0 for a lack of medical cannabis programs.
ASA issued letter grades to all state medical cannabis programs in the report, based on a 0 to 100 scale. The programs were evaluated on the metrics of: patient rights and civil protection, accessibility, program functionality, affordability, health and social equity, consumer protection and product safety, and penalties.
The report does not evaluate recreational or adult-use cannabis programs.
ASA found that the number of medical cannabis patients continues to expand across the country, now numbering more than 6 million. That represents an increase of close to 1 million patients from the 2021 State of the States report.
The authors said that two states have added legal medical cannabis access programs in 2022, bringing the total to 48 states plus the District of Columbia, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.
Churgai noted that when the group started issuing the report, only 14 states had medical cannabis legislation.
How grades are computed
The letter grades distributed to states in the report range from B, meaning a strong medical cannabis program, to F, for a fatally flawed or absent program. Churgai explained that an A represents the “ideal medical cannabis law,” and no state received one.
“We know that we already know that some things do not exist in states, like coverage under health insurance for cannabis products,” Churgai said. “We base everything on a perfect program that we know cannot exist right now without federal oversight.”
As such, ASA graded on a curve in the 2022 report, allowing states that offer a full range of access and protections to the best of their ability a passable grade.
Still, even with the adjusted system, no state earned a grade above a B-, or 76% on ASA’s medical cannabis grading scale.
The report also highlighted individual “gold standard” provisions in each program.
For the civil rights and patient protections category, Arizona received the highest score, at 96%. The national average score in this category was 58%.
Maryland received the highest score for consumer protection and product safety, at 84.5%, compared to the national average of 44.8%.
Illinois and Virginia scored the highest in the affordability category, with a score of 65%. The national average score for affordability was 39.6%.
For access to medicine, Maine received the highest score at 95%. The national average in this metric was 42.13%. In the health and social equity category, Ohio received the top score of 90%, while the national average was 45.82%.
ASA averaged the 56 state and territory grades to find that medical cannabis access in the United States only received 46.16% or a “D+” on ASA’s grading scale. The authors said that the score marked a 2-point improvement from 2021.
“We’ll take that,” Churgai said. “But one of the themes actually in this year’s report was our surprise that more states are not making improvements.”
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https://southdakotasearchlight.com/2023/02/03/state-medical-cannabis-programs-failing-to-make-enough-progress-advocacy-group-finds/
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