Pennsylvania medical marijuana hearing

Medical marijuana grows Feb. 1, 2011, at a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland, California. Pennsylvania lawmakers heard testimony Feb. 25, 2015, about a medical marijuana proposal in the Keystone State.

(AP File Photo)

Pennsylvania lawmakers considering medical marijuana legislation heard Wednesday from medical community supporters of cannabis as medicine and those with concerns, as well as entrepreneurs touting ways to track patients' use of the drug.

The state Senate Government Committee only took testimony and did not vote on the proposal, Senate Bill 3.

Sen. Daylin Leach in a statement afterward outlined changes he'd like his fellow committee members, including co-sponsor and Republican chairman of the committee Sen. Mike Folmer, to consider before a vote is taken.

"Today's hearing made it clear that we can create a medical cannabis protocol in the Commonwealth that is among the best in the country," Leach, D-Montgomery/Delaware, stated. "By adding language to Senate Bill 3 to allow doctors to decide what is best for their patients, we will enable thousands of Pennsylvanians to get the medical treatment they need to live healthy, happy and productive lives. To deny this medicine to people who desperately need it would be cruel and inhumane."

Among the changes Leach said he would like to make the bill are the elimination of qualifying medical conditions so that patients and their doctors, not politicians, decide who can obtain marijuana. He'd also like Pennsylvania to permit vaporization as one of the ways to administer the drug.

A vote on whether Pennsylvania will join growing list of states that allow medical marijuana is still likely months away, pennlive.com reports.

Watch the hearing here:

According to statements provided by Leach's office, those offering testimony were:

Jeffrey C. Raber

Raw plant material:

Direct ingestion - juicing, in capsules, as tea

Combustion - standardized rolled cigarettes

Vaporization - hand-held to desktop units like the Volcano

Extracts:

Direct oral ingestion

Direct topical application

Vaporization

Derivative products:

Tinctures, capsules, tablets, ointments, creams, infused edible products for oral and sublingual applications, suppositories, transdermal patches, lozenges and dry powder inhalers

"All of the above mentioned systems may be effective for some patients," Raber's testimony reads. "An individual patient may even find that multiple methods of use are most effective for them throughout the day. It is entirely possible that a patient benefits tremendously from inhalation in the morning, sublingual delivery during the day and an oral ingestion at night before bedtime."

Chris Ellis

Groff's testimony reads: "Modeled after the same technology that is in place within the financial sector, we would recommend that the state implement a real-time regulatory enforcement registry. While it may be confused with a patient registry, this type of system actually ties together the information from seed-to-sale systems, and dispensary point-of-sale systems."

Pennsylvania Medical Society members cautioning against marijuana use:

Dr. Steven Shapiro

, a member of the Pennsylvania Medical Society Board of Trustees and a pediatrician practicing in Montgomery County, says in his statement: "Let me begin, as we did a year ago in our testimony before the Senate Law and Justice Committee, by expressing in the strongest terms our opposition to the legalization of marijuana for recreational use. Marijuana is a dangerous drug, and the public health consequences attendant to legalization for recreational use would be significant.

"However, the legalization of marijuana for medical treatment purposes is a more complicated matter. There is some evidence that marijuana may provide relief from nausea to cancer patients, and it is asserted that it may aid in the treatment of some other disorders as well. We are also aware of recent stories that oil derived from cannabidiol has aided some suffers of Dravet syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy. However, legalizing medical marijuana on the basis of anecdotal evidence is risky at best, and may be dangerous at worst."

Dr. Bruce MacLeod

, an emergency physician from Allegheny County and the society's immediate past president, discussed a particular derivative of cannabis that some have used successfully to reduce seizures in pediatric patients: "Senate Bill 3 goes far beyond the use of cannabidiol oil to treat children with seizure disorders, permitting the use of marijuana with THC, its psychoactive ingredient, to treat a long list of disorders. This despite a review in this month's Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, the official journal of the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, stating that a growing body of evidence links cannabis to 'long-term and potentially irreversible physical, neurocognitive, psychiatric and psychosocial adverse outcomes.'"

Dr. Jack D'Angelo

, of Staten Island, New York, said in his testimony: "It is important to note here that most funded studies on cannabis only focused on the side effects. Traditionally when a drug is studied we have the opportunity to assess its efficacy as well as its side effects but funded American research really has been limited to the side effects only. Even with this focus, there has been no noticeable link to mortality or long term side effects."

Dr. Stephen B. Corn

-- Harvard Medical School director of clinical innovation, Brigham & Women's Hospital staff scientist and director of clinical innovation at Children's Hospital in Boston -- stated: "Clearly, unbiased quality education was needed to address the therapeutic benefits, as well as the potential adverse effects of medical marijuana. In order to help fill this significant gap in medical education, in 2013 we launched "Medical Marijuana: Medical, Legal, Social, and Political Issues" on

. Briefly, TheAnswerPage.com is a medical education website that I co-founded and has been providing free medical educational content worldwide since 1998."

Medical professionals voicing support for medical marijuana:

Colleen L. Barry

, associate professor and associate chairwoman for research and practice in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, stated: "In absolute terms, states with a medical marijuana law had about 1,700 fewer opioid painkiller overdose deaths overall in 2010 alone than would be expected based on trends before the laws were passed. While medical marijuana laws have been controversial, our study indicates an important unintended benefit of state medical marijuana laws."

Thomas Trite

, pharmacist in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware, said in his statement: "Natural cannabis has a remarkably high margin of safety and it is virtually impossible to overdose on it. As stated by Arthur McBay, Chief Toxicologist for the state of North Carolina in 1997 - a person would have to consume 1500 pounds in 15 minutes to get a lethal dose. No one has ever died from an overdose of cannabis, but I have seen individual become incapacitated and often die from overdoses of pain pills and other medications.

"The key to the proper dosage for cannabis is to find the lowest dose that yields the intended benefit. Use of a cannabis vaporizer is the most recommended method as an alternative to smoking. A vaporizer is a device that gently heats up cannabis to a lower temperature, achieved with digital accuracy. This releases the active medicinal properties in a vapor that can be inhaled, but not to the point of combustion that would create smoke.

"A word of caution to those choosing to medicate with edible cannabis, unlike with vaporizing, it is much easier to over-consume and therefore over-medicate with ingestion. Because it can take longer to feel the effect patients are warned to start with a small amount wait an hour or two before ingesting more, and to be extra careful in consumption so as not to exceed recommended dosage. Cannabis edibles are particularly helpful to relieve pain, spasticity and sleep disorders. But for obvious reasons, edibles are not the best method for someone experiencing nausea, vomiting, or extreme break through pain requiring immediate relief."

Dr. Alan Shackelford

, of Denver, Colorado, said in his testimony: "Opposition by the Federal government notwithstanding,

, as well as six other countries have established medical cannabis programs benefiting millions of patients with debilitating medical conditions. I hope that Pennsylvania will soon join them."