New York Medical Marijuana Program Improving Slowly While The Drug Can Do Much More

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Cannabis popular strong pain relieving effects are finally on their way to New York -- a ray of hope for the ailing community of the city. The state Department of Health (DOH) is in its final stage to add chronic pain to the list of medical marijuana programs.

Cannabis industry experts and state health officials are hopeful that thousands suffering from chronic pains will find a safer and stronger pain-relieving method under state medical marijuana program.  Now, pains of cancer and neuropathy and AIDS can successfully be relieved in patients in New York.

This legal step will ease the community from the trap of addictive drugs that have inflamed the painkiller crisis if the nation, says Dr. Stephen Dahmer, the chief medical officer for Vireo Health. People will get off opioids and will use medical marijuana as a safer and more powerful alternative, he added.

On the other hand, the industry executive has a different view. They find this another "baby step" and a conservative approach to the drug. In their view, the program is more restrictive than it is expected to be for reaping greater advantages of the wonder weed, reports The Cannabist.

The bar is too high in the view of Kate Bell, legislative counsel for the Marijuana Policy Project. The health practitioners are restricted to advise the patients marijuana as a pain killer unless the other opioid-based painkillers have failed. If the pain is expected to relief in 3 months or less, the practitioners will not advise marijuana, according to Daily Joint.

Ms bell said further the limitation of "chronic" pain is an unnecessary restriction which means averting people from taking a better pain reliever.  The restriction means encouraging patients to intake addictive painkillers.

Diane Jackson Czarkowski, a founding partner of the consulting firm Canna Advisors, shares her fears saying that marijuana candidates will be forced to seek pain relieving medical cannabis in the black market. This may lead them to obtaining pesticide-laden flowers or moldy illicit product.

The state has approved medical marijuana program and since January 2016, only 12,000 have been qualified to take the drug which means .04% of the total population of New York which is 19.79 million people. Medical marijuana needs a revolutionary step to be used in health care centers for the better quality of treatments for sicknesses and sufferings of patients.