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Good medical cannabis policy happens when elected officials bring patients’ needs with them into the rooms where laws are written, debated, amended, and enforced. The Public Courage Award recognizes elected officials who advance medical cannabis patient safety, access, and rights through legislation, oversight, public education, stakeholder engagement, and other concrete public action.

The issues championed by the 2026 nominees reflect the diversity of challenges medical cannabis patients still face and show why patient voices need to reach the people with the power to change laws. These officials have stood up for patients who need to continue using medical cannabis when they enter a healthcare facility. They have pressed their colleagues to ensure product testing requirements adequately protect patients. They have challenged outdated protocols for probable cause that expose patients to unwarranted stops and searches. They have listened to patients and medical professionals and taken on the barriers preventing state medical cannabis programs from meeting their needs.

The 2026 nominees are Georgia State Senator Matt Brass; Georgia State Representative Jasmine Clark, PhD; Rhode Island Representative Susan R. Donovan; Oklahoma State Representative Jacob Rosecrants; and Maine State Representative Marc G. Malon. These elected officials come from different states, political parties, and legislative backgrounds. What connects them is a willingness to bring medical cannabis patient concerns into policy debates where those concerns can otherwise go unheard, and to put concrete solutions before their colleagues.

Learn more about the Public Courage Award!

Rep. Susan R. Donovan

Rhode Island Representative Susan R. Donovan has focused on one of the most vulnerable moments a medical cannabis patient can face, entering a hospital or other healthcare facility and potentially losing access to a treatment they use outside that setting.

Donovan introduced H 7535, the Compassionate Access to Medical Cannabis Act, which would require certain healthcare facilities to allow terminally ill patients to use medical cannabis subject to documentation, storage, administration, and safety requirements. The proposal places medical cannabis access inside the broader discussion about patient comfort, institutional responsibility, and continuity of care.

Rep. Jacob Rosecrants

Oklahoma State Representative Jacob Rosecrants has focused attention on what reaches patients after a cannabis product has already moved through cultivation, manufacturing, laboratory testing, and regulation.

In 2026, Rosecrants authored HB 3013, legislation requiring final harvest and production batch samples of medical marijuana to be tested for specified pesticide analytes. The proposal puts a patient safety question directly into the legislative process: whether required testing is looking for the contaminants patients need regulators to catch before a product reaches the dispensary counter.

Rep. Jasmine Clark, PhD

Georgia State Representative Jasmine Clark, PhD, brought a practical consequence of changing cannabis laws into the criminal justice conversation. She authored HB 496, legislation that would prohibit the scent of marijuana, cannabis, or hemp from being the sole basis for a stop, search, seizure, or arrest. The proposal responds to a legal landscape in which hemp and state-regulated medical cannabis can complicate assumptions based on odor alone.

Clark’s proposal asks law enforcement policy to keep pace with laws that already distinguish among legal hemp, medical cannabis, and prohibited conduct. It also gives lawmakers a concrete standard for how those distinctions should affect interactions between the public and law enforcement.

Rep. Marc G. Malon

Maine State Representative Marc G. Malon has challenged policymakers to examine the safety standards applied to products sold to medical cannabis patients. He sponsored LD 104, the Act to Protect the Health of Medical Cannabis Patients and Streamline the Mandatory Testing of Cannabis, legislation centered specifically on testing within Maine’s medical cannabis system.

Malon’s proposal brought a fundamental patient protection question before the legislature: what should patients reasonably be able to expect when a state identifies cannabis as medical? His advocacy has kept product testing, patient health, and the meaning of medical standards connected in that discussion.

Sen. Matt Brass

For Georgia State Senator Matt Brass was the lead Senate sponsor of SB 220, the Putting Georgia’s Patients First Act. The legislation expanded the program and became law in May 2026 after attracting bipartisan sponsors. Brass also offered and defended amendments as the legislation moved through the Senate.

The road to SB 220 stretched back years. Brass had already been engaging with patients, families, medical professionals, and others as Georgia built its program, and he publicly described cannabis as medicine during earlier legislative debates. With SB 220, many concerns patients had raised about the program’s limits carried into a broader legislative package.

When Patient Concerns Reach the Legislature

The 2026 Public Courage Award nominees have taken patient concerns and moved them into the legislative process, addressing the places where government decisions directly meet patient lives, including healthcare access, product testing, law enforcement, and the structure of state medical cannabis programs. Without an elected official willing to take that step, even urgent patient issues can remain unresolved for years.

The nominees reflect the qualities patients hope to find in their representatives: a willingness to listen, take difficult issues seriously, challenge longstanding assumptions, and carry constituent concerns into policymaking. The 2026 Public Courage Award nominees were nominated by the people who have seen that leadership firsthand. Their nominations recognize elected officials who take on difficult issues, challenge longstanding assumptions, and use the policymaking process to improve the lives of medical cannabis patients.

Meet the nominees, read their full profiles, and cast your vote for the 2026 Public Courage Award through October 25.