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State of the States Report Evaluates Medical Cannabis Programs

Posted by Abbey Roudebush · February 24, 2022 3:08 PM

Americans for Safe Access is excited to announce the release of our annual report: “Americans for Safe Access State of the States Report for the Year 2021” which grades the array of differing medical cannabis laws and regulations across the country from a patient's perspective.

ASA scores each state and territory on six core categories as well as a penalties category. We also provide recommendations for every jurisdiction, model legislative language for lawmakers, and recommendations for state regulators. In this year’s report, the average grade across all jurisdictions was only 44.38% (D). This highlights the critical need for major improvements across the country.

The six core categories scored are:

Patient Rights & Civil Protections
Access to Medicine
Program Functionality
Affordability
Health & Social Equity
Consumer Protections & Product Safety

How did your state do?

Access a copy of this year’s State of the States report.

What can you do?

Every one of us needs to keep pressing our lawmakers, regulators, and officials to make the needed changes outlined in this report if we are going to keep this momentum going. This report not only provides you with a valuable tool for evaluating your own state’s program, but also gives you an analysis of what’s working and not working in other states. With this information, you can have more productive conversations with your legislators and officials on setting up or improving your state’s medical cannabis program.

Send this report to your state legislators today!

Nearly every positive advancement towards changing medical cannabis laws has been a result of people like you, organizing and petitioning their legislators to provide them with safe access to this medicine. Patient advocates spend thousands of hours every year in legislative briefings and administrative hearings, analyzing new regulations and laws, and lobbying their elected officials to pass and improve medical cannabis programs. Our work is saving lives!

Please join us in getting the MORE Act passed!

Posted by Abbey Roudebush · September 30, 2021 5:28 PM

The MORE Act just passed in the House Judiciary Committee on September 30,2021 by a vote of 26-15. With the passage of this bill in a key U.S. House of Representatives committee, we are one step closer to ending the federal prohibition of cannabis once and for all!

We support the MORE Act because it would remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and benefit the medical cannabis community in several ways:

Ending the conflict of laws between the federal and state governments on cannabis.
Enabling patients to travel across state lines with their medication without fear of punitive law enforcement intervention, fines or jail time.
Improving facilitation of federal, academic and private research on medical cannabis in the U.S.
Introducing much-needed federal leadership and oversight over key components of medical cannabis policy that states have struggled with, such as laboratory testing and labeling standards, patient access, and medical cannabis businesses practices.
Establishing grant programs for cannabis job training programs, cannabis-related criminal records expungement programs and a national equity licensing program.
Allowing federal permits to applicants with felony cannabis convictions.
Creating an Office of Cannabis Justice to oversee social equity provisions in the bill.
Directing taxes from retail sales to pay for job training, legal fees and health education programs in impacted communities.
Helping disadvantaged business owners to create equitable cannabis licensing programs for individuals impacted by the drug war.

Despite this victory in the Committee, we still have work to do. We need to ensure that the MORE Act is introduced on the floor of the House of Representatives for a vote by the full body, and we need to make sure it passes the House with additional amendments that are centered around the needs of medical cannabis patients.

We urge you to contact your member of Congress to ask that they support the bill, should the MORE Act go to the full House floor for a vote. Use the simple tool below to use our template email with your Representative.