BATON ROUGE, La. – Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards on Monday signed into law, expanded legislation that will allow any state-licensed physician to prescribe medical cannabis for “debilitating conditions” at their discretion.
Prescribing physicians will no longer be limited to a list of serious medical conditions that previously were required of patients to qualify for medical marijuana access, which included cancer, epilepsy, glaucoma, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), among others.
The new law is scheduled to be implemented August 1. It comes one year after Louisiana became the first state in the Deep South to allow medical marijuana sales, after state voters had approved medical marijuana legalization in 2015.
On the same day, Governor Bel Edwards signed two additional bills containing cannabis-related legislation. House Bill 418 would provide immunity from prosecution for physicians that prescribes medical cannabis and licensed facilities providing care for medical cannabis users.
“House Bill 211 facilitates the provision of financial services to state-licensed cannabis businesses and prohibits ‘penalizing’ state banks and credit unions that provide such financial services,” the National Law Review described in a post.
Both pieces of legislation are also scheduled to take effect starting in August.
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) Deputy Director Paul Armentano said in a blog post, “This is common sense legislation that provides physicians, not lawmakers, the ability and discretion to decide what treatment options are best for their patients. Just as doctors are entrusted to make decisions with regard to the supervised use of opioids and other medicines—many of which pose far greater risks to patients than cannabis—the law should provide doctors with similar flexibility when it comes to recommending cannabis therapy to a bonafide patient.”
The Louisiana Senate at the end of May approved the bill expansions that included the medical marijuana prescription provision, proposed by Republican chairman of the House health committee Representative Larry Bagley.
Currently, smokable forms of cannabis are not available in Louisiana, but medicinal patients can access oil, ingestibles, tinctures, topical formulas, and inhalers.
