For seven long years, I have been traveling to Columbia to try to persuade lawmakers to give my daughter a chance at a better life. South Carolinians with serious medical conditions deserve the same medical freedom that patients have in 36 other states: the ability to use medical cannabis when recommended by your doctor.
Poll after poll shows that more than 70% of voters support changing South Carolina laws to allow for a compassionate medical cannabis program.
My 13-year-old daughter, Mary Louise, suffers from devastating seizures. I was grateful when lawmakers defended patients like her, despite federal law, and allowed hemp extracts to be produced in CBD products. These low-powered cannabinoid products provided Mary Louise with some relief. But when visiting Maine, we learned how much more relief she could get from complete medical cannabis under the care and guidance of a doctor.
Over the years, I have met dozens of South Carolinians who are suffering because our state has not decriminalized medical cannabis. People like Margaret Richardson, a grandmother who suffers from an excruciating condition that often left her bedridden before trying cannabis. South Carolina’s cruel laws force Margaret to crawl like a criminal. She sometimes runs out of the medicine that gave her life back. I also know many veterans who have managed to substantially decrease their dependence on debilitating pharmaceutical drugs by consuming medicinal cannabis for their service-related and pain-related PTSD.
Now, finally, the bill that would give relief to my daughter and so many others, the SC Compassionate Care Act, is in the Senate floor.
Despite the bill’s incredibly conservative nature, SLED chief Mark Keel said in an opinion article on Saturday that the Compassionate Care Act is “about legalizing marijuana” and made several other misleading claims. The SC Compassionate Care Act deals with medicine, and I am writing to clarify things.
Chief Keel asked, “When was the last time we needed South Carolina legislation for a drug to be prescribed by a doctor or dispensed by a pharmacy?” I believe it was in 2016, when our legislature passed a “Right to Judge” law to allow experimental drugs to be provided to terminally ill patients.
As Chief Keel noted, the FDA did not approve marijuana, and 77% of Southern Carolinians would like it to regulate marijuana. I am among them. However, in 1970, Congress made the decision to classify marijuana as a Table I drug that was political and not science-based. In doing so, the federal government created a Catch-22 that made FDA approval of the cannabis plant virtually impossible, despite thousands of studies showing its safety and medicinal value. I would love for the federal government to do its job and allow medical marijuana across the country. But its failure to act is no excuse for the state to fail its most vulnerable.
Chief Keel’s portrait of medical cannabis dispensaries is nothing like what S.150 himself would require. Each dispensary must have a trained pharmacist, medical assistant or clinical nurse to advise patients on dosage and modes of administration. Cannabis would have to be tested in the laboratory, labeled for potency and identified by the cannabinoid profile, not by “flashy names”. The products did not attract minors and the stores should have a discreet and medical appearance.
His claim that this bill is a danger to our children is a false clue. Study after study showed that cannabis use among young people does not increase in medical cannabis states. The only minors who can use cannabis under the law are those like my daughter, who has a specific serious illness and support and guidance from her parents and doctors.
South Carolina lawmakers – not Congress – write our state laws. The legislature has defended its citizens’ medical freedom before, in the face of unjust federal laws, and can and must do it again.
Get in touch with your legislators and ask them to consider 2021 the year they will finally pass the SC Compassionate Care Act. It is narrowly elaborate, conservative and desperately needed.
Jill Swing is president of the SC Compassionate Care Alliance in Charleston.