2020-21 Improvements and Recommendations

Once again, lawmakers in Indiana did nothing to advance the safe access of medical cannabis for their constituents. ASA encourages Indiana state legislators to organize functional reforms to help patients, including expanding the list of qualifying conditions required for eligibility to participate in the state’s CBD program, removing arbitrary caps on THC content in cannabis-related medications and organizing a fully functional medical cannabis production and sale system for patients to purchase medical cannabis in state.

ASA encourages state lawmakers to listen to the constituents of Indiana and initiate work focused on building a comprehensive medical cannabis program. Such a program should provide legal protections to patients related to employment, housing, education and family law. The system should also authorize an in-state production system for lab-tested medical cannabis and cannabis products that can be made available to patients at legal retailers. ASA also recommends that lawmakers authorize patients and caregivers to cultivate cannabis at home to reduce costs to patients. Ideally, caregivers should even have the option to become retailers themselves or to sell products tested for safety by a third-party laboratory to retailers for consumption by patients. Home and small-scale cultivation would offer patients a greater variety of options to treat their condition, and address cost challenges cannabis patients face due to the lack of insurance coverage of cannabis products. ASA further recommends that Hoosier legislators look to high scoring states and territories to help craft their legislation to create a robust medical cannabis program. Neighboring states of Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio all have functioning programs from which Indiana can learn.