PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona’s top public health official is denying requests to expand the state’s medical marijuana program to allow use for post-traumatic stress disorder or three other conditions.
Health Services Director Will Humble said a review of scientific research found a lack of published data on the risks or benefits of using marijuana for the four conditions.
Humble announced his decision Thursday evening in a blog post on the department’s website (http://www.azdhs.gov/ ).
The decision to deny requests by veterans, care providers and others for medical marijuana use for PTSD, migraine headaches, anxiety and depression follows a recommendation by medical officials in the Department of Health Services.
The medical advisory committee report to Humble was obtained earlier Thursday by The Associated Press under Arizona’s public records law. The recommendation was dated Tuesday.
The recommendation cites University of Arizona studies that looked for scientific research findings on medical marijuana and the four medical conditions.
“We acknowledge there is anecdotal evidence that using marijuana has helped patients, but there is no way to exclude the possibility that the improvement is due solely to placebo,” the advisory committee said in its report.
Arizona now permits medical marijuana use to treat cancer, glaucoma, AIDS, chronic pain, muscle spasms and hepatitis C.
Those conditions were authorized in the law approved by voters in 2008 to create the program. The law also requires the department to consider petitions to allow use for more conditions, and those submitted earlier this year were the first.
Scientists and medical marijuana advocates have complained that research in this country has been stymied by a lack of a legal supply of marijuana.
The Arizona Medical Association’s house of delegates voted in June to urge the state’s congressional delegation to support having the National Institute on Drug Abuse make marijuana available for privately funded research.
