White Plains, MD – Medicinal cannabis is coming to Southern Maryland and already people are lining up and questioning how they can receive help with chronic pain without having to turn to opioids—now an epidemic in the state.
Chris Johnson of The Health Center in White Plains, said the facility stands ready to help patients.
“Depending on what your medical condition is, there are seven covered by the state of Maryland,” Johnson noted. “A lot of them [conditions] are fairly general under those seven qualifying factors. It could be chronic pain, back, neck and shoulder pain, muscle spasms. The doctor goes under those guidelines, determines how long the patient has had the symptoms and tries to determine what does it stem from? It really depends on what is going on with you.”
The seven qualifying conditions according to the Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission (MMCC) are: Caschexia (Wasting syndrome), Anorexia, severe pain, severe nausea, seizures, severe or persistent muscle spasms, glaucoma and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“They’ve been adding to it,” Johnson explained, stating that chronic pain has already been included.
Johnson said the process of becoming certified takes roughly two days.
“You can do it in any order you wish,” he noted. “If you have your ID number ready, it takes five minutes.”
He advises potential patients to get any medical documentation that supports the condition they want medical cannabis for before scheduling an appointment.
“If you want to go out of order, we can do it that way too,” he added. “You can schedule an appointment with us and then see your provider. If they get their medical records after they see us, we forward them on to the MMCC. We try to make it easy, because not everybody has everything lined up perfectly.”
Johnson stressed that The Health Center is also helping pediatric patients with seizures and attention deficit disorders.
“Our medical director has been doing this for 25 years,” he said. “We are opening a specialty clinic just for those patients,” which he said a lot of physicians are afraid to touch.
As far as the process itself, Johnson said potential patients should bring in their valid driver’s license, fill out the paperwork which will be reviewed by staff along with the person’s medical records.
“If you qualify we will take your ID and give you a certification that day,” he said.
Johnson said he tells the physicians associated with the program how much he appreciates them every day.
“There is a lot of liability on the doctors,” he said. “They’re risking their license to do this.”
He said it is amazing in how just a short time, more than 30 states have approved either medicinal or recreational cannabis.
“This last election, there were too many to count,” Johnson noted. “Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Maine, Nevada—all legalized either medicinal or recreational cannabis. The thing about Maryland is as far as the medicinal cannabis, we are fairly stable and fairly safe because of how much legislation we have on everything.
For more information call The Health Center at 301-262-2168 or go on line at thehealthcenterllc.com. They are located at 4560 Crain Highway, Suite 5, White Plains, MD 20695.
Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com