Pubdate: Tue, 02 Sep 2014
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2014 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: John Ingold
Page: 4A

MEDICAL POT RULES COULD HURT PATIENTS

Families Have Moved to Colorado to Obtain Marijuana Oil for Their 
Children WHO Have Seizures.

Dozens of families who moved to Colorado to treat their severely 
disabled children with a special kind of marijuana could lose access 
to the treatment under new rules proposed by the state health department.

The proposed rules would stop medical marijuana caregivers from 
serving more than 10 patients at a time. Current rules allow for 
caregivers to serve more if they obtain a waiver.

Only four of Colorado's 2,896 caregivers currently serve more than 10 
patients, according to state figures. The caregiver who said he 
serves the most patients, a Boulder County man named Jason Cranford, 
has nearly 90.

Most of Cranford's patients, though, are children with severe seizure 
disorders, he said. Cranford provides them with a nonpsychoactive 
marijuana oil extract that is rich in a compound called CBD. He makes 
the extract from a plant he named Haleigh's Hope, after one of his 
patients whose mom credits the treatment with saving her daughter's life.

If the rules pass, Cranford said he'd be forced to jettison dozens of patients.

"I pray that she'd be in that 10," said Haleigh's mother, Janea Cox. 
"But I just don't know. How can you choose between kids? These are 
kids' lives."

The Board of Health will hold a public hearing on the proposed rules 
Sept. 16, and Cox said she expects numerous families to protest the 
rules at that meeting.

The state health department says the new rules are needed to curb 
abuses in the caregiver system, which law enforcement officials often 
cite as a source of illegal diversion into the black market. A 
critical state audit previously found oversight of caregivers lacking 
and said some caregivers may be "actually small scale businesses but 
are not being regulated as such."

Dr. Larry Wolk, the executive director of the Colorado Department of 
Public Health and Environment, said the large marijuana grows 
associated with plus sized caregivers could pose health and safety 
risks, especially if they are in residential areas.

"We want to try to create a reasonable ceiling for what can be 
considered a caregiver operation," Wolk said. "Because, at some 
point, it does need to be called a commercial operation."

The issue reaches deep into the details of Colorado's tangled medical 
marijuana rules.

A caregiver is defined in Colorado's medical marijuana constitutional 
amendment as someone who "has significant responsibility for managing 
the well-being of a patient." A caregiver is allowed to grow 
marijuana on behalf of that patient, but a subsequent appeals court 
decision clarified that caregivers must do more than just provide marijuana.

When lawmakers legalized medical marijuana dispensaries - which must 
abide by much stricter regulations than caregivers and pay hefty 
licensing fees - they also limited caregivers to serving five 
patients apiece, with a waiver allowing them to serve more. The 
proposed new rules keep the waiver in place but put a hard cap of 10 
patients on any single caregiver.

Twenty caregivers - 0.7 percent of the total - currently serve more 
than five patients. More than 75 percent of caregivers serve only one 
patient, according to state figures. Caregivers serve about 3.8 
percent of the state's total medical marijuana patient population.

Cranford's patient numbers have shot up as the result of increasing 
interest in using CBD oil to treat kids with serious forms of 
epilepsy that aren't controlled by traditional drugs.

While some CBD providers - most notably the Realm of Caring, which 
was featured in two CNN specials on the subject - sell the oil 
through a dispensary, Cranford chose to provide the oil as a 
caregiver. He said doing so means he can keep costs low for his patients.

"In my situation, it's obviously for the patients," Cranford said. 
"What I'm growing can't even get you high. I'm getting caught in the 
crossfire."

Wolk said patients who lose their caregiver as a result of the 
proposed rules could switch to other providers.

"They may be able to obtain these products from another caregiver or 
a dispensary," he said. "These are not products that are unique to a 
single caregiver."

But Cox, who helps with Cranford's Flowering Hope Foundation to 
provide CBD oil and support to families, said there aren't enough CBD 
providers in Colorado to meet the demand. The Realm of Caring, for 
instance, has a wait list of thousands of families.

Cox estimated that about 60 percent of families connected to the 
Flowering Hope Foundation moved to Colorado for CBD because they felt 
the treatment options in their home state had run out. Cox moved from 
Georgia in March, and she said Haleigh has gone from hundreds of 
seizures a day to about four or five while on CBD oil.

"I just don't know what I'd do without Jason," Cox said. "It just 
gives you this horrible feeling in your stomach that you're fixing to 
be abandoned by another state."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom