WHO WE ARE
Founded in 2002, Americans for Safe Access (ASA) is a nonprofit patient advocacy organization with the mission of ensuring access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research.
ASA offers a platform for medical cannabis, wellness, and healthcare stakeholders to engage in projects and programs that address knowledge, policy, and regulatory gaps to improve access to medical cannabis. Our work is guided by a shared vision of a national framework that closes the divide between wellness and medicine by fostering the integration of cannabis into patient treatment plans, including frontline options, creating pathways to insurance coverage, investing in the development of standardized cannabis-based products, ensuring a safe and consistent supply, and eliminating employment, housing, parental, and healthcare discrimination.
ASA’s IMPACT
Over the last two decades, ASA has utilized a variety of tactics, including legislation, education, litigation, research, grassroots empowerment, advocacy, and services for medical cannabis stakeholders to meet the immediate needs of patients and consumers while clearing the way for a national medical cannabis program.
This journey includes passing state laws to remove criminal penalties and creating state-based distribution programs, creating internationally recognized product safety standards for the cannabis and hemp supply chain, participating in petitions and supporting efforts to reschedule cannabis in the US, removing barriers for research, changing the scheduling of cannabis in drug treaties through the World Health Organization and the United Nations, and passing federal legislation to end federal interference in state medical cannabis programs and to protect medical professionals.
Today, cannabis-based therapies provide relief to millions of Americans, often serving as a crucial alternative when conventional treatments have failed or as a safer option compared to pharmaceuticals. Patients and consumers across the United States can now access cannabis products in numerous forms from a variety of markets.
CHALLENGES
State-level medical cannabis programs operate independently of the broader healthcare systems, creating significant financial, geographical, and legal barriers for individuals seeking access to these treatments. The federal prohibition keeps cannabis therapeutics out of reach for Veterans, federal employees and contractors, and anyone requiring federal assistance. For those patients and consumers that do have access, product safety regulations differ significantly from state to state, and now CBD, along with a host of other cannabinoid products, are being sold outside any regulatory authority without safety evaluations or testing for contaminants, harmful additives, and adulterants.
THE SOLUTION
It is time for Congress to create a national medical cannabis program that will take politics out of cannabis therapeutics and broaden how the United States defines medicine.
We have overcome many political, social, and legal barriers but have not fulfilled our mission until there is safe access for all!
Join us today!
"I am alive thanks to cannabis and ASA ‐ join me to keep the fight alive too!"
‐ Ellen Lenox Smith
"What would my family have done without Americans for Safe Access?"
‐ Gail Rand
First life saved by the Medical Cannabis Organ Transplant Act!
‐ Tamra Howard
Who We Serve
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