Dear Senator,

The Compassionate Care Act (S150) passed out of the Senate Medical Affairs Committee on March 31, 2021.

As your constituent, I’m writing to urge you to support legislative efforts to allow physicians to authorize medical cannabis therapy to qualified patients.

Passage of this legislation will offer qualified patients state-sanctioned access to a therapy that may offer them significant benefits. Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia already offer similar patient protections.

Data from other states finds that the enactment of medical marijuana access is associated with lower rates of opioid abuse and mortality, and does not negatively impact workplace safety, teen use, or motor vehicle safety.  

Previously enacted legislation that sought to provide patients with legal access to cannabidiol, a single compound in the marijuana plant, is not sufficiently addressing patients’ needs. This law also provides no legal, in-state, consistent, standardized source for medicine and leaves far too many patients suffering needlessly. South Carolina’s patients deserve the option to legally access a therapeutic product that is objectively safer than the litany of pharmaceutical drugs it could replace.

According to statewide polling data, 72 percent of South Carolinians say they support legalizing the use of medical marijuana.

Please work to pass the S.C. Compassionate Care Act, S. 150. Patients battling serious medical conditions have already been dealt a tough hand. They should not have to be criminalized for using a medicine that works. South Carolina should not steer its suffering patients to highly addictive and often deadly opiates when a far safer, natural remedy has been shown to be effective.

Sincerely,