Congress is showing an increased willingness to let VA doctors talk to veterans about medical marijuana in states where it’s legal, although final approval is far from certain.
The House approved a measure this week that would let Veterans Affairs Department doctors help their patients sign up for state medical marijuana programs, something the VA now prohibits.
“I’m certainly open to it,” Rep. Mike Coffman, a Republican and former Marine from pot-friendly Colorado, said Friday.
A Senate committee approved a similar measure last month but the full Senate hasn’t voted.
Medical marijuana is now legal in 23 states and the District of Columbia, but pot remains illegal under federal law. Arguments for medical marijuana are getting a warmer reception from lawmakers amid nationwide concerns about overuse and abuse of prescription painkillers and psychotropic drugs.
Coffman, chairman of a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee on oversight and investigations, said he wasn’t enthusiastic when his state first approved medical marijuana. But if the drug helps veterans deal with post-traumatic stress, it could reduce the use of stronger prescription drugs and save taxpayers money, he said.
The measures in Congress wouldn’t permit the VA to provide patients with marijuana, Coffman said. It would only free doctors to talk about it with their patients.
Rep. Earl Blumenaur, D-Ore., who sponsored the House measure, said medical marijuana could be safer and more effective than other drugs for veterans suffering from chronic pain or the stress disorder.
Providing access to pot as an alternative “is critical at a time when our veterans are dying with a suicide rate 50 percent higher than civilians and opiate overdoses at nearly double the national average,” Blumenaur said in a written statement.
Research on whether marijuana helps with PTSD has been contradictory and limited, and the VA has warned that increasing numbers of veterans who suffer from it have become dependent on pot.
The VA didn’t immediately respond Friday to a request for comment on the proposals in Congress.
Congress has killed similar measures in the past, but backers say the proposals are attracting more votes this time. Blumenaur’s measure passed Wednesday 233-189, including 57 Republicans in favor.
Coffman’s subcommittee held a hearing in Denver Friday on problems in the way the VA prescribes and keeps track of drugs.
He cited the case of a pharmacy technician at the Denver VA Medical Center who officials said was found in an operating room trying to inject herself with a painkiller stolen from a hospital refrigerator.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Congress needs to watch the old Movie ‘Logan’s Run’. This country has gone to Hell in a Hand Basket! They will be walking around like ‘Dead Men Walking’!! SAD
I am for anything that will help a veteran but many of the veterans from Vietnam war were hooked on pot and othe drugs that harmed them. Some have never recovered and are still on drugs or have died from drug overdoses. I am for giving veterans that have been in combat whatever they need to get on with their lives including pot if it will help them. To not provide a veteran any medecine that will help them recover I think is a crime. We should not have a vote if we have not walked in their combat boots through the hell of war. Do not condemn them, we must try every way possible to help them but it has to be monitored by doctors that care not what we have in most VA hospitals today under the Obama administration. One last thing a veteran should be able to go to any hospital for emergency care. God bless every US service men and women. Lets pray we get a commander in chief that cares about the entire military in this country and those abroad instead of every other group of people that want special treatment that they don’t deserve. God save America from destroying itself from within.
So the VA’s research indicates that some people become dependent on pot? It seems that getting patients hooked on another substance is the last thing people need. Marijuana seems to be the new wonder drug. It’s interesting that many pot users from the 1970s and 1980s did not seem to be the picture of health.
& give the Vets acess to outside HC from the VA for medical issues.
Expand that coverage alone.
Or outsource to Blue Cross to run VA hospitals??