Highlights from the 7/28/2022 PA Medical Marijuana Advisory Board Meeting
(This is not at all an exhaustive list)
-Acting Secretary of Health Dr. Denise Johnson welcomed new board members and gave a big shout-out of thanks to departed board member and patient advocate Luke Schultz (well-deserved!)
-A program update was given from Interim Acting Director Pete Blank. Most relevant to us - He presented slides showing that declines in retail prices are beginning to come in line with wholesale pricing declines. (Which is an improvement from what was stated at the last board meeting.) I included the slides on that here.
-At the last meeting, the recommendation to add the diagnosis of Chronic Hepatitis to the list of qualifying conditions was accepted/adopted by the Board. It was mentioned today that the board will now forward that recommendation to the Legislative Reference Bureau (LRB). (There are several steps needed to actually have the diagnosis added to the list of qualifying conditions. Adoption of the recommendation by the Board was just step 1.)
-The Health Contact Form that was added in March to the DOH website to facilitate public comment/feedback directly to the MMJ Advisory board was briefly discussed. There were (only) 11 submissions of public comments received since then using that Health Contact Form. That form can be found here: https://forms.health.pa.gov/health-contact-us/
-Subcommittee assignments were reviewed and the Reports subcommittee was noted to be dissolved since each subcommittee will now create their own reports.
-The Medical Review subcommittee presented a motion to create a process and application for any ACRC (Academic Clinical Research Center) to propose a new qualifying medical condition for research purposes only. (The motion was accepted and the process will be developed).
-Eric Hauser from Organic Remedies presented their research and findings (in association with PCOM) on the safety of remediation of microbial-contaminated plant material. Specifically they were looking to determine if Organic Remedies' manufacturing processes were capable of creating extracted materials that would conform to current PA DOH regulations. They found essentially that the first stage of their extraction process eradicated the specific bacteria and mold / yeast contaminants that were being investigated. This will now be investigated further and reported upon by the Board.
-The topic that I was hoping would be discussed today that was unfortunately not, was the plans for Phase 3 of the Medical Marijuana Assistance Program. It was not mentioned at all. Hopefully we'll get some update on that at the next quarterly meeting in Sept.
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You can submit any comments to the PA Medical Marijuana Advisory Board by going to https://forms.health.pa.gov/health-contact-us/
and then selecting "Medical Marijuana Advisory Board" in the drop-down category field.
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Please share with others in the program who may not have been able to watch the meeting today.
My best regards,
-Dr Jen Minkovich