DELAWARE -- Delaware Governor John Carney has signed into law a bill that expands Delawareans’ access to medical marijuana and updates the First State’s 13-year-old medical marijuana program.
HB 285, according to the Senate Majority Caucus, expands access to the medical marijuana program to seniors, gives more authority to healthcare providers to determine if medical marijuana would be beneficial to patients, and streamlines the process of issuing marijuana registry ID cards.
Under the new law, doctors can recommend marijuana for any condition they see fit. Previously, only debilitating health conditions qualified.
Notably, patients 65 years old or older can now self-certify for medical cannabis without a doctor recommendation.
The State can also now issue medical marijuana cards with one, two, or three year expiration dates. Patients with terminal illness must be issued a card with an indefinite expiration date.
Patients who have a medical marijuana card from other states now have the same privileges in Delaware, but only if that patient would have qualified for a medical marijuana card in Delaware.
Gayle Marie says the new changes to the Delaware medical marijuana act are personal. She recently lost two family members to illnesses and regrets that neither of them had access to medical marijuana.
"That could have alleviated a lot of pain, especially for the older individual, who ended up passing away a lot faster than he thought he would," says Marie.
Richard Messick tells a similar story.