Defeat THC ban
28th May 2024 · 0 Comments
By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Columnist
My father had a better quality of life in the last months before his death on June 25, 2023, because of THC, and the effort by the Louisiana Legislature to outlaw it could negatively affect many elderly medical patients, especially those in their final months and years.
I rarely write my personal perspective in editorials, yet I felt helpless as my father could not seemingly take a breath. He was in the latter stages of heart failure. An insufficient amount of oxygen was making it into his bloodstream. It was a weeks-long fight with the hospital to even convince them that he needed supplementary oxygen tanks. Three times he was denied the basic air needed to breathe – until finally, with the help of some sympathetic doctors, the insurance hurdles were overcome.
Obtaining medical marijuana would prove even more difficult. My father‘s medical condition did not meet the classic qualifications for pain treatment with cannabis, so most physicians were hesitant to even suggest it. My father, who had little experience with cannabis products, had no concept of the drug’s efficacy or its help to people with respiratory and coronary conditions. He didn’t know enough to argue. He took his doctors at their word. Throughout his adult life in New Orleans, he had never even had a puff of marijuana, so he had no idea.
Desperate to alleviate at least some of his discomfort, I went to one of the 2,000 Louisiana locations selling the so-called “marijuana gummies,” the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) edibles, and purchased a package. My father expressed his skepticism, but after much begging, ingested one. Within minutes, the anxiety of feared suffocation alleviated, and the capillaries opened by the THC in his bloodstream allowed him a few hours of respite. He could breathe.
The “marijuana gummies” even gave him the physical stamina, between two weeks-long stays in East Jefferson Hospital, to attend the 81st birthday party of his closest friend and join the table for a final Father’s Day dinner with my in-laws. These joyous evenings would have proven physically impossible for my father – in his diminished state – without the THC products.
Now Sen. Thomas Pressly’s (R-Shreveport) Senate Bill 237 seeks to outlaw these tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) products in Louisiana unless they are licensed medical marijuana products, a prescription that the doctors would not give to my father. Pressly convinced the Louisiana Senate to pass the bill, which would wipe out a $33 million industry in the Pelican State.
It doesn’t matter that THC has been proven as a physically safer alternative to alcohol. By 2024, it has become available in thousands of Louisiana bars, restaurants and grocery stores. Tax revenue from hemp products was $4.1 million in 2023 and will be much greater in 2024, as sales are expected to exceed $100 million by next year. A significant part of these taxes is earmarked for Louisiana’s early childhood education program.
If passed by the La. House and signed into law by Gov. Jeff Landry, Pressly’s legislation would kill a nascent industry, but in my personal case, would probably have denied any quality of life to my father in his final weeks.
Moreover, it would end a regulatory regime that has put Louisiana on the forefront of U.S. standards in the hemp industry. The state imposes stringent safety, ingredient, potency, packaging and testing requirements. More importantly, Louisiana stands as one of the few states which requires hemp products to be reviewed and approved by the state’s health department. More than 2,500 hemp products have been registered with the La. Department of Health. So far in 2024, more than 2,000 Louisiana businesses have received hemp retail, wholesale, or special event permits through the ATC. Thousands more have submitted applications.
There are no recorded automobile accidents for driving under the influence of THC, yet thousands die from drunk driving every year. No one has proposed banning alcohol since prohibition. Instead of championing a safer alternative to liquor, Pressly would ban it. The senator does this even as a champion in a separate piece of legislation removing bans on monetary donations from casinos. It seems a curious set of moral stands to legalize gambling institutions making campaign contributions, yet eliminate another form of vice.
Some lobbyists have proposed a middle ground to SB237, regulating the concentration of the THC in products, but that would have proven of little help to my father with his heart condition. Still, it is better than nothing.
Personally, I have never ingested a marijuana gummy nor ever taken any THC product – liquid or solid. My experience is purely observational, and that observation is that THC spared my father agony.
Please, Senator Pressly, do not bring needless pain to other dying parents!
This article originally published in the May 27, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
