Wisconsin Medical Cannabis Support Statements Now Available

WISCONSIN MEDICAL CANNABIS ACT (Jacki Rickert Medical Cannabis Act)

I’m writing to urge your support of a Medical Cannabis Act in Wisconsin.  Publicly known as the Jacki Rickert Medical Cannabis Act, this type of act seeks to enact Statewide legal protections shielding those seriously ill patients who use cannabis therapeutically with a doctor’s recommendation from criminal prosecution.   I urge you to sponsor or co-sponsor this type of legislation.

The use of cannabis as medicine is a public health issue; it should not be part of the “drug war”.  According to a recent national survey of U.S. physicians conducted for the American Society of Addiction Medicine, nearly half of all doctors with opinions support legalizing cannabis as a medicine.

More than 80 state and national health care organizations, including the American Nurses Association, American Public Health Association and The New England Journal of Medicine, The Hospice Organization and Palliative Experts (HOPE) of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Nurses Association support immediate and legal patient access to medical cannabis.

The largest association of doctors of internal medicine and the second largest medical association in the country, the American College of Physicians, released a policy paper in support of medical cannabis, stating, “The ACP strongly urges protection from criminal or civil penalties for patients who use medical cannabis as permitted under state laws.”

Prior to the 1990s, even the federal government allowed specific patients to enroll in a medical cannabis program called the Compassionate IND Program.  A handful of patients still to this day receive medical cannabis from the federal government via the Compassionate IND program.  Jacki Rickert, a Wisconsin native, was accepted into this program — only to learn that it was abruptly closed to new applicants.  Most patients, like Jacki, are forced to suffer needlessly.

Today 16 states and Washington D.C. – Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington – have enacted laws protecting medical cannabis patients from state prosecution. With nearly every boarder jurisdiction to Wisconsin enacting legislation to end criminal and civil penalties for medical use, Wisconsin is falling behind, despite our motto, “Forward”.  These laws are operating primarily as lawmakers intended and have not led to widespread abuses among adolescents or adult recreational users.

I believe it is unconscionable to criminalize patients who find therapeutic relief from cannabis , and I urge you to support the Jacki Rickert Medical Cannabis Act by sponsoring or co-sponsoring such legislation.

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****Are you a physician, attorney, law enforcement employee, community leader, clergy or other professional in Wisconsin supporting medical cannabis reform and/or are you a medical cannabis patient and willing to help change the law, please contact: The Office of  State Assembly Representative Mark Pocan at:  State Capitol, Room 125 West, PO BOX 8953, Madison WI 53708 Email: Rep.Pocan@legis.wisconsin.gov  Phone (608) 266-8570