Zero Medical Cannabis Markets Meet Patients' Needs in Full, According to a Report

Zero Medical Cannabis Markets Meet Patients’ Needs in Full, According to a Report

In its annual “State of the States” report, Americans for Safe Access (ASA) gave 13 state medical cannabis programs failing grades. Idaho and Nebraska, the last two states without medical cannabis access, both got a zero.

In the report, the ASA gave failing grades to Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

No state got an “A,” but Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, and Rhode Island got the highest grade on the ASA report card, a “B-plus.”

The ASA also gave grades to the medical cannabis programs of U.S. territories, such as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (D+), Guam (C-), Puerto Rico (D), and the Virgin Islands (D+).

According to a report by Ganjapreneur, the group points out that “even in states with full medical cannabis programs, each state differs greatly in how patients can access their medicine, where they can access it, or even what types of products they can access.” Adding that because medical cannabis remains prohibited federally “most state programs leave out millions of potential patients due to issues with affordability, patient rights, and civil protections, or product safety standardization.” 

The ASA gave no state a grade higher than a B+ because none of them “include the entire range of protections and rights that should be afforded to patients under the law, with some lagging far behind others.”  

The ASA thinks that there are more than 6 million medical cannabis users in the U.S., which is about 1 million more than in its report from 2021.

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