Raymond Jennings credits smoking medical marijuana with helping him keep up the strength to survive his cancer battle.

And he worries that other Oklahomans won’t have the same opportunity, after the state Board of Health voted to ban sales of marijuana flowers and leaves, the forms that patients can smoke.

Jennings, of Broken Arrow, said he underwent three rounds of chemotherapy and 35 radiation treatments to kill stage four squamous cell skin cancer. He said he’d never smoked and didn’t like the idea of using marijuana, but was so weak from being unable to eat that he agreed to try it. He received the marijuana in Colorado, where it already was legal.

“I can tell you, without smoking marijuana, I wouldn’t be here today,” he said. “It’s the only thing that stopped the nausea.”