Medical Pot in Utah Costs Right Around National Average

Utah lawmakers met Monday to consider the cost of medical marijuana in the state. Bottom line: Patients pay neither more nor less than in other states where the treatment is legal.

Local news station KUER reports The meeting was part of the State Legislature’s Medical Cannabis Governance Structural Working Group, which “listened to presentations on analysis from the Utah Cannabis Association, the Utah Cannabis Cooperative, and the Medical Cannabis Center under the Utah Department of Health and Human Services. I did.”

A group of lawmakers “compared the cost of three cannabis products in Utah to 19 other states with medical marijuana programs,” KUER said. reportand concluded that “Utah is negotiating average prices for cannabis flowers (buds), gummies and vape cartridges.”

“I’ve been asked to work with policy analysts to compare apples to apples, but it’s actually a difficult task because the nuances vary from state to state,” Utah Cannabis Association’s Alyssa Smiles quoted KUER. With the Utah Cannabis Cooperative, “we selected 19 states with different cannabis markets at varying stages of progress to compare with Utah.”

The group collected data on the three most common products from “the last week of July for all products available for sale in other states and Utah in July 2022.” flowers (35%); and gummies (25%).

“He doesn’t understand why Utah’s flower market is significantly lower than the other 36 states with medical cannabis programs,” Scott Erickson, of Utah’s Cannabis Cooperative, told lawmakers. .

“Most flowers are 50 percent or more in volume,” Erickson said, as quoted by the station. “There’s all sorts of speculation as to why.”

According to KUER, it is a “cultural influence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” which “does not allow tobacco products to be smoked, but states that marijuana use is permitted under medical circumstances.”

Voters in Utah passed a bill to legalize medical marijuana treatment in 2018.

Patients with the following conditions are eligible for treatment at our hospital:Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis; Cancer; Cachexia; Persistent nausea that does not respond significantly to conventional treatments, except for pregnancy-related nausea; Cannabis-induced periodic vomiting syndrome; cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome; Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis; epilepsy or debilitating seizures; multiple sclerosis or persistent and debilitating muscle spasms; , post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosed by a health care provider and documented in the patient’s record by the VA, or diagnosed or confirmed by an assessment from a psychiatrist, a psychologist with a master’s degree preparation , a licensed clinical social worker with a master’s degree preparation, or an APRN in psychiatry. autism; a terminal illness where the patient’s life expectancy is less than her 6 months. A condition that results in an individual receiving hospice care; as defined by federal law, a rare condition or disease affecting fewer than 200,000 individuals in the United States that is not treated with conventional medications (opioids or opiates). ) or not adequately managed despite treatment attempts using physical interventions; ineligible despite treatment attempts using opioids or opiates or conventional medications other than physical interventions; Pain lasting more than 2 weeks that is not adequately managed in the opinion of one health care provider.

Earlier this year, lawmakers in Utah passed a bill to protect medical marijuana patients in the state from discrimination in medical and public employment.

“What this bill does is to clarify to some extent what the legislative intent was … to recognize medical cannabis as a legitimate use of cannabis to treat certain ailments such as chronic pain. Republican Congressman Joel Ferry, who sponsored the bill, said: time.