Pennsylvania launches 24th US medical marijuana program: ‘Marijuana is medicine and it’s coming to Pennsylvania’
Pennsylvania has become the 24th state to legalise a medicinal cannabis program. Tom Wolf, the Democratic governor, signed the bill, Sunday afternoon, as a huge crowd of marijuana legalisation supporters hailed and cheered at the Capitol building in Harrisburg.
According to Associated Press, although it may take two years to get the retailers opened and write regulations, a provision will allow parents to legally give medicinal cannabis to their sick children before the bill comes into effect in a month.
Republican Senator Mike Vereb described the program as a healer to opioid use. According to him, opioid use is “the number-one killer in Pennsylvania.” The bill will allow licensing of physicians, dispensaries, cannabis growers, certifying physicians to prescribe cannabis use and tracking the marijuana plant. Although patients will not be able to obtain marijuana legally for smoking and growing the plant, they can take marijuana in the form of pills, oils, ointments, vapours and in any other liquid form.
Vereb said that opioid use has no religion, no colour and no party. It’s a killer that got to be healed. On the other hand, Wolf said that it is not only a great day for Pennsylvania but a great day for all Pennsylvanians. He added that this legalisation is not for any special interest group or campaign contributors but they are doing so to address “a real human need.”
“I never doubted for one second that this day would come. When you get a group of truly dedicated people together that have the same goal and the same mind and the same hearts, you can achieve anything,” said Dana Ulrich, an ardent marijuana legalisation supporter, whose daughter Lorelei has numerous seizures every day.
