T<\/span>he recent progress of the \u201cVeterans Equal Access\u201d amendment in the Senate (it passed the Appropriations Committee on a 24 to 7 vote) is good news, but neither veterans, their advocates nor anyone else invested in safe access to legal cannabis\u00a0should celebrate quite yet.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve reached this same stage before \u2014 just last year \u2014 but then the bill hit the House Republicans<\/a> boss level the only thing left on the screen was \u201cgame over\u201d for the amendment<\/a>.<\/p>\n And some military vets \u2014 even in several states where medical-marijuana is legal \u2014\u00a0<\/em>would still<\/em> have to break the law to obtain medicine under the new bill<\/a>, because PTSD is not yet a qualifying health problem for legal cannabis access in their state.<\/p>\n Since 2001, 2.7 million men and women have been deployed to war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to an official Veterans Administration estimate, as many as 30 percent of them came home with PTSD.<\/p>\n In the last decade, the VA\u2019s game plan for handling vets with PTSD has been to drown them in opiates. As anyone who\u2019s read the news knows, this doesn\u2019t work. It also causes more harm than good. Instead of having PTSD, you have PTSD and<\/em>\u00a0a life-threatening opiate habit.<\/p>\n As it happens, medical marijuana appears to work magic with PTSD. In 2014, a major review found reductions of more than 75 percent <\/a>in PTSD symptoms among veterans who tried cannabis as therapy. As a result, there is immense pressure on Congress to allow veterans from America\u2019s ongoing wars in the Middle East to access medical marijuana legally \u2014 which they currently cannot do within the VA health system.<\/p>\n Despite this, and despite heaps of anecdotes from veterans who swear that cannabis is both a more effective and less harmful treatment for pain than opiates (and that cannabis is about the only effective tool for PTSD), the official line from the Veterans Administration is that there\u2019s no evidence at all marijuana is a useful treatment for military veterans. Vets who do discuss weed with their doctors also risk losing what VA health services they enjoy.<\/p>\n As Politico reported, the country\u2019s \u201cmost conservative\u201d veterans\u2019 advocacy organization, the venerable American Legion, has lobbied Congress and the Trump Administration to lift draconian restrictions on veterans access that prohibit VA doctors from writing their patients medical cannabis recommendations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need solutions,\u201d said Nick Etten, a former Navy SEAL who runs the Veterans Cannabis Project, a health policy organization, in comments printed in Politico in May. \u201cWe need treatment that works. We need treatment that is not destructive. The VA has been throwing opiates at veterans for almost every condition for the last 15 years. You are looking at a system that has made a problem worse the way they have approached treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n As NORML reported, veterans cannabis access cleared a Senate committee last year, only to be removed by House Republicans in the Appropriations Committee. Whether the issue will survive this year is now in the hands of the same crew that\u2019s seeking to remove health care from more than 20 million other Americans in low-income states through the repeal of Obamacare and its massive expansion of Medicare.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in New York State, the addition of PTSD to the list of qualifying health conditions is now up to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. A bill that does just that passed both houses of the state Legislature and is now awaiting Cuomo\u2019s signature. Is his pen ready? Will he sign? He won\u2019t say, and won\u2019t really say what\u2019s holding him back.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to make sure medical marijuana is medical marijuana,\u201d Cuomo said<\/a>, according to multiple reports. \u201cSo we\u2019re careful about what diseases it covers.\u201d<\/p>\n By now, this should be a done deal. Military veterans have said loud and clear what they need and want. Politicians \u2014 and conservative ones \u2014 are choosing not to listen.<\/p>\n TELL US,\u00a0<\/strong>do you think veteran\u2019s deserve medical marijuana?<\/p>\n The post Safe Cannabis Access for Veterans Moves Forward in Congress<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A\u00a0major Senate committee has approved an amendment to the military appropriations bill that would allow military veterans in legal cannabis states to access cannabis medicine. The recent progress of the \u201cVeterans Equal Access\u201d amendment in the Senate (it passed the Appropriations Committee on a 24 to 7 vote) is goodContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,80,417,139,81,339,748,210],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17867"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17867"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17868,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17867\/revisions\/17868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Safe Cannabis Access for Veterans Moves Forward in Congress<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"