Jan 8 OPMC Meeting

[Stoney Girl]

OPMC Meeting

I have been invited, and have applied, to be a member of the Oregon Pain Management Commission. As a policy making board, I feel that I can be effective there.

There were no other people with comments, so they gave me the first 30 minutes of the meeting.

I gave my report. I said that ACMM, ACLU, & OCDLA favor making a legislative change that would allow OMMP to fund patient outcome data collection and research and that language that would make that change possible is included in I-28. Then I presented them the revised income projection document that Mike made and I went over what I-28 would do.

Dr. Rinehart asked us to send him a bullet point list of what I-28 does, and he asked how dispensaries could be non-profit if they weren’t 501c3.

They were very excited about I-28. They will be very supportive, and at this point, they plan to read I-28 over and vote to sponsor it as a Commission with Sen. Morrisette bringing it in the Senate and Rep. Greenlick bringing it in the House. I sent Jennifer Wagner pdf files of I-28 and the income projection document and summary. Because Sen. Morrisette and Rep. Greenlick were not there, I will have to approach both, but I gave the income projection document to Morrisette’s legislative aide – Don Bishoff - and to Rep Maurer’s assistant Allison MacMullin.

The Chair and Jennifer Wagner have both become very educated about medical marijuana in the last year and other members of the Commission stated that they should take the lead as a policy making board on this. The Chair let me know that Rep. Greenlick is a new ally for us. Theresa Keene said Rep. Greenlick would sponsor this bill.

Mike revised the income projection document to address some of John’s concerns, so the figures were smaller than in original projections, but still very attractive.

They were very impressed with the amount of work that went into the income projection document.

The entire commission then began giving individual testimony on their encounters with Medical Marijuana;

A PHD made the point of saying that MMJ has long been a stigma and it is time for people to recognize the value. He went on to propose that this group take the lead in making those changes.

A country doctor from the south coast reported that out of his 300 patients, 150 were in the program. He noted that these individuals swear by the treatment and usually require no other form of pain relief. In addition, their quality of life has improved simply by the improvement in application of treatment.

Many gave testimony and all were fully supportive. They asked us if we wanted them to sponsor and recommend this as a bill. I said yes, please. They said they would have to read it over and have a vote, but that I should send my documents to Jennifer and she would forward them to everyone.

I mentioned that German doctors had declared that marijuana kills cancer (and the Chair said she had read that study) and mentioned that Oregon has an opportunity to study the effects of medical cannabis on the harder to treat cancers and possible increases in survivability by using cannabis treatments that we have squandered for the last 10 years. I-28 would provide safe access and funding for that type of research.

The group discussed how MMJ and pain management was misdiagnosed for addiction by some family services workers. There was discussion of active involvement in these cases. They feel that addiction specialists and DHS social workers need pain management training of some kind because they often recognize legitimate need for pain treatment as addiction and only treat addiction with abstinence. This is significant, because it is similar to the issue we are facing with SB 465 in that SB 465 proponents are also taking this view.

[Soniq420]

fantastic report

Congratulations on joining the OMPC board.

Activism = much respect

Thanks for what you do!!!!