News Local/State

Illinois Panel OKs Medical Marijuana For Pain Conditions

by The Associated Press, with Additional Reporting from Illinois Public Media
 
In this Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2015 photo, the "mother" marijuana plants are keep healthy inside the "Mother Room" at the Ataraxia medical marijuana cultivation center in Albion, Ill.

In this Tuesday, Sept. 15 photo, the "mother" marijuana plants are keep healthy inside the "Mother Room" at the Ataraxia medical marijuana cultivation center in Albion, Ill. Marijuana strains with names like Blue Dream, OG Kush, Death Star and White Poison are now being cut and dried, and by mid-October, will be turned into medicine in many forms like oils, creams, buds for smoking, edible chocolates and gummies. (Seth Perlman/AP)

An advisory board has voted to add chronic pain syndrome, autism, post-traumatic stress disorder, and five other conditions to the list that can be treated by marijuana in Illinois.  The state's Medical Cannabis Advisory Board made the recommendations Wednesday in suburban Chicago.

The board also added irritable bowel syndrome and osteoarthritis to that list.

The group expressed frustration last month when Gov. Bruce Rauner's administration rejected its first suggestions for expanding the list of medical conditions.
 
Board chair Dr. Leslie Mendoza Temple said she hopes the Rauner administration will have a different response after medical marijuana dispensaries start selling the drug.

Jesse Fosdick, who planned to address the panel Wednesday, suffers from chronic pain syndrome.  The machine operator and father of two from the Carroll County community of Savannah said he’s constantly tired, suffers muscle spasms, and takes a lot of opiates in order to stay on the job. 

And Fosdick, 25, said some physicians haven’t helped at all.

“They wanted me to try this medication, and this medication, and none of the medications ever worked," he said.  "And I went to see the physical therapist, and they started making me do their physical therapy and everything.  And it flared out my condition basically, and made it worse to where I couldn’t even hardly get out of bed in the morning.”

Meanwhile, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has now licensed eleven dispensary sites, seven of them in the past week.  Illinois’ first medical cannabis is expected for patients who’ve been cleared by a doctor later this month.