Will Isern

wisern@pnj.com

As Floridians and their doctors await state health officials to set rules to govern the distribution of medical marijuana, a handful of local doctors have qualified to register patients to receive medical marijuana treatments.

One doctor in Escambia County, five in Santa Rosa County and four in Okaloosa County have completed the required training that will allow them to register patients with the state’s Compassionate Use Registry.

Dr. Michelle Beasley is the only doctor listed in Escambia County to have completed the Low-THC Cannabis Continuing Medical Education course, which doctors must complete before they can register patients to receive medical marijuana treatments.

In Santa Rosa County, doctors Rachel Brown, Purushottam Garg, Sheila Mohammed, Ben Renfroe and Sara Winchester have all completed the training.

In Okaloosa County, doctors Gary Banks, Eleanor McCain, Samuel Poppell and Robert Siegel have completed the training.

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The doctors will not prescribe medical marijuana, since the drug is still federally illegal, but will submit patients’ names to the state registry which will be accessed by licensed dispensaries. The medical marijuana industry is expected to boom in Florida as an estimated 500,000 patients could qualify to receive treatment.

Brown, a rheumatologist, said a number of her patients have approached her about the possibility of using medical marijuana to treat chronic pain. Brown said she has read studies on the effects of medical marijuana in patients with chronic pain as well as toured one of the state’s licensed marijuana nurseries. She said she was impressed with the professionalism of the operation and looks forward to recommending medical marijuana to her patients.

“In this field, I’m seeing medical cannabis as a safe alternative for severe auto-immune patients to control their pain,” Brown said.

Brown said as medical marijuana becomes an accepted method of treatment, more research will be needed to gauge other uses for the drug.

“Everything we do is supposed to be evidence-based, and there’s such a negative stigma behind marijuana that there aren’t big studies behind it driving us to prescribe it, so that’s really where the need is going to be,” she said.

Renfroe, a neurologist, said while treatments derived from medical marijuana can be effective for some patients, the drug is not a panacea for all ailments. Renfroe said medical marijuana treatments will be like any other tool in a doctor's arsenal, to be used when appropriate.

"People have a misconception of what it can do medically, and I'm not really sure where that comes from," Renfroe said. "There's a long list of plant-based drugs and this is simply another drug in our armory. It's a good one to be sure, but people seem to think it's going to cure everything."

Renfore said so long as medical marijuana treatments can't be covered by insurers — because of its illegal status at the federal level — other treatments may remain preferable.

Medical marijuana has already been legal for terminally ill patients, but the passage of Amendment 2 last November opened the drug up to a much wider range of patients.

The amendment allows doctors to order medical marijuana as a treatment for patients with cancer, epilepsy, glaucoma, HIV, AIDS, post-traumatic stress disorder, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis.

The amendment also gives doctors the power to order marijuana for “other debilitating medical conditions of the same kind or class as or comparable to those enumerated, and for which a physician believes that the medical use of marijuana would likely outweigh the potential health risk for a patient.”

However, a rule being proposed by the Florida Department of Health would take that power from individual doctors and give it to the Florida Board of Medicine. The proposal has drawn the ire of Amendment 2 backers.

“The rule is basically ignoring the text of the constitutional amendment at almost every point of the way,” Ben Pollara, campaign manager of the political committee that backed Amendment 2, told The News Service of Florida.

Amendment 2 gives health officials until July 3 to finalize regulations to implement the new law.

The Department of Health has scheduled five public hearings for next month to receive input on the proposed rules.