Columbus Business First
By Tom Knox
Posted June 16th 2016
Some Ohioans will soon be able to legally buy marijuana.
But those hoping to use the drug for medicinal purposes must have been diagnosed with a specific set list of illnesses so the number of those getting prescriptions may not be widespread.
In September Ohio will become the 25th state to legalize marijuana, but only for… more
Consider this: In neighboring Michigan, another medical-marijuana state, just 1.84 percent of residents are medical marijuana patients. That would mean about 168,500 users from Ohio’s adult population.
Gov. John Kasich signed House Bill 523 (which you can read here), making Ohio the 25th state in the nation to legalize marijuana in some form.
Dispensaries won’t be debuting for awhile as the state is giving up two years for all the regulatory, production and retail systems to be set up.
But if you have one of the qualifying conditions and permission from your doctor (physicians have to recommend treatment via the state medical board), you can legally use marijuana as soon as early September. You just have to buy it where it’s legal in another state.
“Michigan or Pennsylvania. Get the product, come home, we’ll protect them with that card from law enforcement harassing them until we get our dispensaries up and running,” State Sen. Kenny Yuko told the Statehouse News Bureau.
So what conditions qualify? Here’s the list:
- AIDS/HIV
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS
- Cancer
- Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the disease that often afflicts football players
- Crohn’s disease
- Epilepsy or another seizure disorder
- Fibromyalgia
- Glaucoma
- Hepatitis C
- Inflammatory bowel disease
- Multiple sclerosis
- Pain that is either chronic and severe or intractable
- Parkinson’s disease
- Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD
- Sickle cell anemia
- Spinal cord disease or injury
- Tourette’s syndrome
- Traumatic brain injury, or TBI
- Ulcerative colitis
- Any other disease or condition added by the state medical board