Page 36 - Florida Sentinel 11-26-21

Crime
Man Dies After Being Struck By Car
State Sets Rules For Caregivers Of Medical Marijuana Patients
State News
The St. Petersburg Police Department is investigating a fatal traffic accident. It took place last Thursday night.
According to police, the accident took place on 34th Street South and 3rd Avenue South, around 8:15 p. m.
The unidentified adult
male pedestrian was trans- ported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced deceased. The driver re- mained at the scene and was cooperating with the investi- gation.
The investigation is con- tinuing.
Editor’s note: This com- mentary is provided by the Medical Marijuana Educa- tion and Research Initiative (MMERI) of Florida A&M University.
If you were the caregiver of an elderly parent in Florida, you would be able to pick up prescription drugs and administer them to your mother or father as ordered by their physician. You also would be allowed to discuss their medical conditions and treatments with their health- care providers.
A caregiver, according to state statute, is someone who is “entrusted with or has as- sumed responsibility for the care or the property of an elderly person or disabled adult. ‘Caregiver’ includes, but is not limited to, rela- tives, court-appointed or vol- untary guardians, adult household members, neigh- bors, health care providers, etc.
But when it comes to overseeing the healthcare of someone being treated with medical marijuana — even your own child — the State of Florida takes a much stricter approach to the caregiver-pa- tient relationship. The Florida Department of Health has issued rules on who can and cannot be care- givers of medical marijuana patients.
“They have to actually re- ceive a Medical Marijuana Use Registry Identification Card, just as the patient does, in exactly the same way,” says Donna Sachse, a cer- tified nursing assistant and office manager of Compas- sionate Cannabis Clinic, one of the largest medical mari- juana treatment facilities in Florida.
That’s just for starters.
Founded by Chief Medical Officer Dr. Barry Gordon, Compassionate Cannabis Clinic has served more than 5,000 patients at its Venice and Fort Myers office loca- tions. Dr. Gordon is a lead- ing advocate of patient and caregiver education on all things medical cannabis, in- cluding the endocannabinoid system.
able to get that same product every single time. Percocet is the same Percocet whether at a CVS or Walgreens phar- macy, but that’s not quite so for a cannabis cultivar. It’s a plant.”
A possible solution to this problem could be to allow for the private cultivation of cannabis plants. Some states already do, but not Florida. However, a proposed state constitutional amendment seeks to change that as well as make marijuana use and possession legal for adults 21 or older. The initiative, which could go before voters in No- vember 2022, would permit “cultivating nine live mari- juana plants per adult with eighteen plants maximum per household.”
On a different but related point about caregivers, Dr. Gordon says he wants to see job protections for healthcare workers, including first re- sponders, who use medical cannabis to treat post-trau- matic stress disorder (PTSD). He says the COVID-19 pan- demic forced healthcare workers to take care of too many patients at a time and comfort many of them in their dying hours because family members weren’t al- lowed at their bedside.
“No healthcare worker is prepared for that,” he says. “They don’t want alcohol, Ambien or Xanax or Well- butrin or Prozac to help them. Many of our healthcare workers are going to carry this period of time with them for a long time. They’re using cannabis already because they don’t want the other substances.”
Visit https://bit.ly/
3Bub12k to watch MMERI’s Conversations on Cannabis Virtual Forum featuring Dr. Barry Gordon, chief medical officer and founder of Com- passionate Cannabis Clinic, and Donna Sachse, a certi- fied nursing assistant and office manager of Compas- sionate Cannabis Clinic, on YouTube.
For more information on medical marijuana and to sign up for the MMERI newsletter, go to http://mmeri.famu.edu.
DR. BARRY GORON
Caregivers, he says, “need to have as much, if not more, education than the patient themselves in order to be a success in the program.”
While Dr. Gordon sees the value in governing care- givers of medical marijuana patients as Florida does, he says the DOH rules don’t en- sure a thorough introduction to cannabis as medicine.
“Even in the test for care- givers, there’s nothing that discusses the endocannabi- noid system or the caregiver’s knowledge of cannabis,” he says, referring to the “care- giver certification course” DOH requires would-be care- givers to complete.
To become a registered caregiver of a medical mari- juana patient (only one care- giver per patient, with some exceptions, such as parents or guardians of a minor), you have to be at least 21 years old, a resident of the state and fill out an application with DOH’s Office of Medical Marijuana Use. Applicants who aren’t a close relative of the patient must pass a back- ground check.
The rules also state that “a caregiver must not be a qual- ified physician and not be employed by or have an eco- nomic interest in a medical marijuana treatment center or a marijuana testing labo- ratory.”
“Because that’s a conflict of interest,” explains Sachse.
Dr. Gordon says one of the biggest challenge’s care- givers face is the “availability and the consistency of a product” a qualified physi- cian recommended for the patient. “They want to be
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