Medical Cannabis Is Aiding Most Minnesota Patients

More states are making cannabis legal and getting behind it as a real medical option and Minnesota is one of them. This makes sense, as more Americans are getting on board with legalized weed. Even in more conservative states, we’ve seen this start to happen. Bills and initiatives may get shot down, but pro-cannabis people are trying. Last year, Minnesota made the wise and amazing decision to start a medical cannabis program. Good on you, North Star State!

The best part is, patients have been really benefiting. In fact, most medical weed users have seen amazing results. Now if only the rest of the country would follow suit…

One of the first things that would need to happen, of course, would be to reschedule cannabis. Currently, it’s in the same category as heroin, listed as schedule 1 controlled substance. This makes it extremely difficult for doctors to prescribe it, banks to give loans to weed companies, and people to have access to it.

How Minnesota Got (Some) Legalized Weed

You might be wondering how Minnesota added their name to the roster of pro-cannabis states. It does currently have a Republican-controlled legislative, after all. Recreational weed may not be available there anytime soon. But in 2014, Governor Mark Dayton signed a new Minnesota bill into law.

While very restrictive, it made weed available for patients with conditions like cancer, HIV/AIDS, and ALS. Severe pain was also added to the list of qualifying conditions. PTSD will hopefully be added in August.

Minnesota Patients Report Amazing Results

The state Health Department did a study on how medical cannabis patients are coping. They asked patients to rank their treatment on a scale of 1 to 10. The results? No surprise here: they’re doing a lot better. Sixty-four percent of patients gave their treatment a rating of 6 or 7.

Across all patients, there was at least a 30 percent reduction in symptoms. Only a small percentage indicated little to no relief. But overall, the Minnesota medical cannabis program could be improved upon. Like, a lot. Medical cannabis is still wildly expensive for Minnesotans. It’s not even covered by their health insurance! (They could certainly benefit from that and a weed delivery service to boot).

But this summer, the Health Department plans to release the full study to the public. The report only covers results from 2015 t0 2016, so there’s a lot more research that needs to be done.