Texans who suffer from chronic pain and potentially other debilitating conditions would be able to access the state’s medical marijuana program under a bill approved by the Texas House on Wednesday.
The bipartisan legislation, sponsored by House Public Health chair Stephanie Klick, is an expansion on the state’s 2015 “Compassionate Use” law — which has, in a number of legislative changes since it was created, allowed a growing number of patients in Texas to legally use cannabis to treat debilitating symptoms of conditions such as epilepsy, autism, cancer and post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
House Bill 1805 won initial approval Tuesday, and then received a final vote Wednesday, passing 127-19. It now heads to the Senate.
The bill would allow doctors to prescribe 10 milligram doses of cannabis for chronic pain cases that might normally call for an opioid pain management prescription. Some conditions that could cause such pain would include Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis.
The bill also authorizes the Texas Department of State Health Services to further expand the list of conditions that it could be used for in the future, without needing to change state law anymore.
Klick’s bill also changes the way the legal level of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC — the active psychoactive agent in cannabis — is measured, from a concentration to a set…