Illinois Patients Fear Attack on Medical Marijuana by Jeff Sessions

Jeff Sessions is trying to make it harder for medical marijuana patients to access their medicine. He’s requested that Congress undo the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment, removing protections for medical marijuana. Patients in Illinois, as well as dispensaries, are worrying about patient access if Sessions gets his way.

HCI Alternatives serves about 500 patients monthly, according to Fox Illinois. Many of their patients use medical marijuana for chronic pain. A fibromyalgia patient, April Nicole Cooley, worries that her access to medicine that works could be cut.

Cooley said, “I would not be able to get up and move. I would be sitting on the couch in front of the TV like a vegetable just wasting away.”

Cooley also said, in regards to her previous treatment, that, “I was on morphine, it almost ruined me.”

AG Sessions still considers marijuana a “gateway drug”. Chris Stone of HCI Alternatives says that’s an unreasonable label on the plant.

Stone said, “50-percent or more of patients come in and say we’ve been on ‘X’ number of pills and the funny thing is they have to take one pill and then have to take another pill to deal with the side effects of the first one and they end up having to take ten or twelve or fifteen pills.”

Stone worries about the patients visiting HCI Alternatives having to go back to relying on opioids.