Patients who want marijuana won't have to have visited their doctor four times during the past year to get the necessary recommendation.
State Health Director Will Humble said Monday he scrapped that requirement from the rules he first proposed in December for Arizona's medical marijuana laws approved by voters. Instead, a patient would be able to get a recommendation with a single visit.
But Humble denied that change will make it easier for those who want marijuana solely for recreational purposes to get the drug.
Instead, he said the state will depend more on doctors to screen out would-be abusers - with his agency looking over doctors' shoulders to keep them in line.
Humble also said his agency will initially license only one dispensary in each of the state's 126 "community health analysis areas." He said that will prevent dispensaries from concentrating in the same highly populated areas.
He also said would-be patients should be able to get the necessary written recommendation that allows them to purchase marijuana on April 14. But with dispensaries not set to be running until this summer, the first patients will have to grow their own drugs.
That right, however, will expire for most patients after the first year once shops are available. Only those living at least 25 miles from a dispensary will continue to be able to cultivate marijuana legally.
The voter-approved measure allows people with certain medical conditions to obtain a doctor's written certification to purchase up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks.
It also says a recommendation can be issued only after a "full assessment" of the patient's medical history and condition. And it requires there be a "bona fide physician-patient relationship."
But the law doesn't define what that is, leaving the task to Humble.
"What we're really doing is going for a ‘medical marijuana' program," he said. Humble said programs in other states are "mostly recreational," as shown by the age of the patients getting the recommendations and the frequent diagnosis of "chronic pain."
"Our objective is to get this right, up front, and ensure that the folks getting the certification have a true debilitating medical condition, that they've had a full assessment, that their physician has done a good job at really diagnosing that problem," Humble said.
While eliminating the four-visit requirement, Humble said there still are written guidelines before a doctor can write a recommendation.
For example, a doctor will have to certify he or she has conducted a personal exam of the patient appropriate to the symptoms and the diagnosed medical condition. The doctor also will have to review medical records for the last year as well as records of how the patient has responded to "conventional medications and medical therapies" before recommending marijuana.
And doctors will need to avow they are willing to be responsible for monitoring the patient for the coming year. But Laura Nelson, the department's chief medical officer, conceded nothing in the rules requires a patient to come back.
There are potential loopholes.
That list of conditions for which a doctor may recommend marijuana contains a catch-all for any chronic or debilitating condition or a treatment that results in "severe and chronic pain."
"The challenge there is how you measure that," Nelson said.
She said there was some thought about adding requirements, like having the doctor review X-rays or MRI scans. Instead, she said her agency plans to monitor the documents doctors must submit each time they write a recommendation to see if any are playing fast and loose with the rules.
"There's not a lot of individuals in their 20s and 30s that have debilitating chronic pain," she said, likely triggering a closer look. And Humble said any doctor writing a lot of recommendations - a figure he put at more than 100 a year - is going to come under scrutiny.
The rules, though, do not limit the amount individuals can buy. Humble said once someone has a doctor's recommendation, he or she can purchase the maximum allowable 2 1/2 ounces every two weeks - more than four pounds a year - without further justification, though the excess cannot legally be sold or given away to others.
As to the doctors, Humble said his agency has no discipline authority. Instead, his staffers inform regulatory boards who can suspend or revoke a license to practice if there is evidence a physician is writing too many recommendations in questionable circumstances.
Lisa Wynn, executive director of the Arizona Medical Board said her agency sees marijuana as "one more tool that doctors will have to help alleviate suffering for their patients."
PeacefulCat posted at 5:15 pm on Mon, Jan 31, 2011.
There is a serious conflict of interest between the implementation of medical marijuana rules and the competing interests and goals of the ADHS. Marijuana is an important medication for alcoholism and drug addiction and it is offered as an alternative treatment in California and other states for people suffering from alcohol or that want to get off of damaging and addictive prescribed medications.
Will Humble is Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) and he has been with the agency at a high level since 1992. He controls approximately 2,000 employees and a budget of $2B. Mr. Humble is now in control of implementing the rules and regulations for the use, cultivation and distribution of medical marijuana here in the State of Arizona. Mr. Humble belongs to a culture of anti marijuana supporters. In many ways this group has prospered and personally and professionally advanced through their opposition to medical marijuana and the will of the people. They have turned their backs on science and common sense. Arizonans voted for medical marijuana in 1996 and 1998 and they were ignored. Now Arizona voters have passed Proposition 203 in November of 2010 legalizing medical marijuana for cancer patients and a few other serious illnesses. This was accomplished in spite of Will Humble and ADHS opposition and efforts to defeat the medical marijuana law.
There is a great conflict of interest here. The ADHS has a monopoly on the anti-depressant and chronic pain pill market for the poor. These powerful individuals have little incentive for allowing homegrown marijuana to compete with their synthetic drug distribution to the poor or the depression and addiction industry they control through Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS).
Many of these drugs the ADHS push are referred to as psych-meds on the street. Most marijuana users avoid these drugs because they are known to make people unstable, suicidal and violent. Many mental health patients prefer marijuana to alcohol and these highly addictive psych-meds and are offered a legal treatment alternative in California and other states.
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is concerned that these dangerous drugs are being over-prescribed in Arizona. Grassley requested Arizona’s spending data on prescription drugs for the Senate Finance Committee, who is calling for a federal investigation into the volume of prescription drugs that the government is paying out through Medicare and Medicaid.
In 2009 Arizona spent over $5.3 million on pain and anti-psychotic medications for its poorest residents. Senator Grassley discovered that Arizona’s top Medicaid doctors wrote between 500 and 3,000 prescriptions per year for several of these dangerous drugs that are under scrutiny. Arizona spent at least $1.3 million on Zyprexa , a schizophrenia drug, for Medicaid patients in 2009. State data show that one doctor alone wrote 2,977 prescriptions for Oxycontin and Oxycodone for AHCCCS enrollees in the 2009 fiscal year. The state paid a total of at least $527,449 for the drugs he prescribed to those patients.
This Arizona data lists the top 10 AHCCCS contractors according to their volume of prescriptions for the medications Alprazolam, Oxycodone, Oxycontin, Roxicodone, Xanax, Abilify, Geodon, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Risperdal and Risperidone. Senator Grassley wrote to Thomas J. Betlach, director of the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS), Arizona's Medicaid program stating: "The overutilization of prescription drugs, whether through drug abuse or outright fraud, plays a significant role in the rising cost of our health-care system,”
These drugs are filling our living rooms and our emergency rooms with heavily addicted and suicidal patients in epidemic proportions yet the ADHS is passing these pills out like candy. Will Humble will not implement unbiased, responsible and meaningful rules and regulations that would safely, economically and efficiently make medical marijuana available to the people that need it for many valid reasons. Will Humble and the ADHS are in direct competition with a normal medical marijuana policy.
Will Humble and his heavily funded cartel of medical marijuana saboteurs need to stand down. This sabotage will result in a continuation of wasted resources, unnecessary crime, suffering, drug addiction, death, social division and civil disobedience. The individuals responsible for prolonging this damage should be held accountable.
PeacefulCat posted at 5:27 pm on Mon, Jan 31, 2011.
The bottom line here is these individuals have no intentions of allowing people to grow this in their backyard for free. They want to keep the price of marijuana so high that people will continue to rob, smuggle, kill and pay these people to protect them from the mess they made.
Join U.S. Hemp in Demanding the Unconditional End of the Marijuana Prohibition. We could stop Billions of Dollars a year from going to Mexico for marijuana
All we have to do is get rid of this crooked government.
Poorman posted at 1:06 pm on Tue, Feb 1, 2011.
We need to have rules on the rules i guess we need a book on rules,and how to use the rules etc.What a circle jerk.
hillstreet posted at 1:28 pm on Tue, Feb 1, 2011.
Whew, the potheads can't wait to start getting high legally.....
California has been overwhelmed with crimes connected to "medical" (yeah right) dispensaries. Dispensary owners have been robbed and killed on their premises and home invasions have skyrocketed by slime balls looking for drugs and money. Sober (not the potheads) Arizonans who voted for this mess will live to regret it.
hillstreet posted at 4:08 pm on Tue, Feb 1, 2011.
hey, nobody will get hurt....
http://www.californiapolicechiefs.org/nav_files/marijuana_files/files/Apr_Jun_2010_Final_Report.pdf
hoopydreams posted at 6:50 am on Wed, Feb 2, 2011.
I really wish that people would realize a few things: 1. Where is all the illegal pot coming from? A: mostly Mexico. 2. What is driving a huge portion of these drug cartels to come over here? A: Pot. 3. What is the largest cash crop in mexico? A. Pot. 4. What is the largest cash crop in CA? A: Medical Pot.
So here's the question to all of you so against it: If it doesn't cause more harm than alcohol (Actually proven to be less harmful than alcohol) or tobacco (for the average person) why isn't it legal? FYI: there are a lot more Average People in the world than nutjobs.
If you made it legal and allowed it to be grown in US Soil, these Mexican drug cartels would be put out of business. This is basic economics. Supply and demand. There's an obvious demand for it (medically and recreationally) and who's supplying it? These cartels we're so scared of.
If it was grown here on American soil, and taxed by the government where would the Mexican drug cartels even have a reason to smuggle it over the US border? Wouldn't we directly benefit the taxes that would be reaped for it?
Wake up, stop believing that "Reefer Madness" mentality. It's lies. The war on drugs has been going on for too long. We spend wayyyy too much money on it. We need to stop demonizing a plant and start going after the real problems: meth, cocaine, heroin, and human smuggling.
Because it is going to generally illegal for the masses, and only available for a small fraction of society of course robberies and murders are going to take place. Especially if they are in bad neighborhoods, or industrial parks. The most dangerous thing about marijuana is that it's illegal.