On September 28, 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 311, also known as “Ryan’s Law”, requiring healthcare facilities to allow the use of medical cannabis on their premises for terminally ill patients with a valid medical cannabis card or/ recommendation from their physician. The law goes into effect January 1, 2022, and applies to all CA health care facilities including acute care hospitals, special hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, congregate living health facilities, or hospice providers (excluding chemical dependency recovery hospitals and state hospitals). Under this law only terminally ill patients are defined as a patient with a medical condition resulting in a prognosis of life of one year or less if the disease follows its natural course.

Physicians with terminally ill patients need only to provide written recommendation to their patients for the patients to utilize the rights created in SB 311. This is the same recommendation that is written for qualification of The Compassionate Use Act. If patients have issues with health care facilities refusing to comply please report immediately using this quick report form.