The State Board of Health rejected a petition Wednesday to add Tourette’s syndrome to the list of conditions for which patients can obtain medical marijuana.

It was the first time in the 10-year history of Colorado’s medical-marijuana law that a petition to add a new condition had made it through the state health department’s review process and come before the board. The decision suggested that the board will require a high standard of proof before allowing new conditions to go on the list.

Board members expressed concerns over the health impacts of smoking marijuana, noted that there are other medications that could be used to treat Tourette’s and concluded that the research wasn’t evolved enough to show that marijuana would be useful in treating Tourette’s.

“I don’t see what we add to the mix by actually adding Tourette’s under these circumstances,” said Glenn Schlabs, the board’s president.

Tourette’s — a neurological condition that causes involuntary verbal and muscle tics — was one of 10 conditions listed in a March petition to the health department that sought their addition to the current array of conditions approved for treatment by marijuana.

The state’s chief medical officer, Ned Calonge, reviewed the evidence arguing that marijuana could help those conditions before deciding to present only Tourette’s to the board for consideration.

Calonge said he looked for examples of peer-reviewed “randomized controlled clinical trials” and found two small studies by German researchers that showed THC, one of the active chemicals in marijuana, reduced tics in Tourette’s patients.

He denied the petitions for the other nine conditions, which included asthma, high blood pressure and rheumatoid arthritis, on the grounds that there wasn’t enough evidence in their favor.

At Wednesday’s hearing, representatives from the Colorado Psychiatric Society argued against allowing medical marijuana for Tourette’s, saying the evidence in favor is outweighed by concerns in the psychiatric community over marijuana’s potential for dependency. Christopher Schneck, the society’s president, said the German study wasn’t conclusive enough.

“THC is not the same as smoking marijuana,” Schneck said. “It’s not a direct one-for-one comparison.”

Neither the petitioner — whose name was redacted from a public copy of the petition because of state laws protecting the identity of medical-marijuana patients — nor any other medical-marijuana advocates testified at the hearing.

But Brian Vicente, executive director of the medical-marijuana patient advocacy group Sensible Colorado, called the review process a “sham.”

“The (health department) has never approved any condition despite numerous petitions over the years, and I think it shows they are institutionally opposed to medical marijuana,” he said.

Vicente noted that Calonge did not mention another study by the German researchers that found treating a Tourette’s patient with THC confirmed that patient’s “subjective experiences when smoking marijuana.”

“They should take more of an open-minded look at these petitions,” he said.

In July, Vicente and a medical-marijuana patient petitioned the health department to add post-traumatic stress disorder to the medical-marijuana list, citing a list of studies. Calonge said Wednesday that the petitioners would be notified of his decision shortly.

John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com

Conditions approved for medical-marijuana use in Colorado

Cancer

Glaucoma

HIV/AIDS

Cachexia (a wasting syndrome)

Severe pain

Severe nausea

Seizures, “including those that are characteristic of epilepsy”

Persistent muscle spasms, “including those that are characteristic of multiple sclerosis”