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Ed Mahon of Highlight PA
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HARRISBURG — The general public may quickly know for the primary time what number of sufferers use medical marijuana to deal with opioid use dysfunction in Pennsylvania, one of the few states to specifically endorse that treatment option.
Highlight PA sought that data whereas reporting on Tyler Cordeiro, a Bucks County man who was wrongly denied addiction treatment funding because of his medical marijuana card. Cordeiro died of an overdose a number of weeks later.
After the Division of Well being refused to disclose the quantity — saying that the state’s medical marijuana regulation “protects affected person and caregiver data” — the information group appealed to the impartial company that settles public information disputes involving the Wolf administration.
The Workplace of Open Information this month dominated in favor of Highlight PA and ordered the well being division to reveal what number of sufferers are licensed for hashish below every of the state’s 23 qualifying circumstances.
In making the choice, the workplace rejected an argument from the Wolf administration that releasing the numbers would violate the confidentiality guidelines of the state’s 2016 medical marijuana regulation. At one level, attorneys for the Division of Well being urged that disclosing the data may result in a prison cost in opposition to an worker.
But, the director of the Workplace of Medical Marijuana, John J. Collins, had beforehand launched related data, together with the variety of individuals licensed to use marijuana because of an anxiety diagnosis, and never faced any known consequences. In that occasion, a spokesperson for the division later mentioned the director responded “appropriately” to a query from a board member.
Whereas Highlight PA’s attraction was pending, the Workplace of Open Information dominated in favor of one other information group, CNHI, that requested information on what number of medical marijuana sufferers stay in every of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties.
“Discovering the requested aggregated information to be confidential would result in an absurd end result,” Kyle Applegate, chief counsel for the workplace, wrote in a July 15 remaining order.
The information revealed that greater than 50,000 individuals registered for medical marijuana stay in one in all 29 rural counties with no medical marijuana dispensary.
Regardless of the CNHI ruling, the Division of Well being continued to argue in opposition to disclosing combination information in Highlight PA’s open information case. In a July 30 transient, the division cited a 2019 Commonwealth Courtroom determination wherein the courtroom cited the confidentiality guidelines of the Crime Victims Act.
In that case, the courtroom dominated in opposition to an individual searching for information for individuals denied sufferer compensation advantages. The Workplace of Open Information rejected that comparability, writing that the Crime Victims Act has stricter confidentiality necessities than the state’s medical marijuana regulation.
Highlight PA additionally requested written insurance policies or procedures describing how the company tracks the usage of its medical marijuana program. The well being division claimed it didn’t have such data, however the Workplace of Open Information discovered the company did not show that.
The Division of Well being has till Oct. 4 to offer the info breakdown and written insurance policies requested by Highlight PA, or attraction the choice to Commonwealth Courtroom. If the company doesn’t do both, Highlight PA may search a courtroom order to implement the workplace’s remaining willpower.
Greater than 633,000 sufferers and caregivers are registered in Pennsylvania’s medical hashish program, based on data introduced by the Division of Well being on the August assembly of the Medical Marijuana Advisory Board.
In 2018, Pennsylvania’s former well being secretary, Dr. Rachel Levine, added opioid use dysfunction to its record of “severe medical circumstances” that makes somebody eligible for the state’s medical marijuana program. Below the state pointers, hashish is meant for use when different remedies have failed or aren’t advisable, or to complement different remedies. Pennsylvania’s strategy to hashish and opioid use dysfunction stays an outlier.
Two of Pennsylvania’s neighbors — New Jersey and New York, which additionally permitted opioid use dysfunction as a qualifying situation for his or her medical hashish packages — supplied numbers to Highlight PA with out an open information request.
In New Jersey, greater than 2,200 of the state’s roughly 115,000 registered hashish sufferers have been enrolled due to opioid use dysfunction in July, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Hashish Regulatory Fee mentioned.
In New York, greater than 2,100 sufferers identified with opioid use dysfunction grew to become licensed in its medical marijuana program from July 2018 to July 2021, based on a spokesperson for the New York State Division of Well being.
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