VENICE – Dr. Barry Gordon spent decades saving lives in the E.R.
“I can honestly say I never took care of a cannabis related overdose,” Dr. Gordon said.
Now he’s the owner and chief medical officer of Compassionate Cannabis Clinic and says marijuana is medicine for a wide range of conditions, customizable to each patient.
“That unique combination of not just the THC, which is the psychoactive intoxicating component, but also the CBD,” Dr. Gordon said. “Also the other cannabinoids..there’s 144 of them.”
It’s come a long way, but he thinks Florida lawmakers can help even more.
“There’s more we want: protections for people still in the work place, job protections,” Dr. Gordon said. “We want reciprocity; patients from Canada, for example, other states, to be able to come down and get their medical cards.”
Dr. Gordon says there’s a laundry list of things that can improve and another list of things he fears.
“There are many on the other side, on the prohibitionist side, so to speak, that want to roll back the program,” Dr. Gordon said.
Last year there was a proposed 10% THC cap on flower products, which is back in discussion this year.
“That would only cause my patients to have to buy twice as much medication, drive people back to the black market,” Dr. Gordon said.
It would also make it more difficult for treatment centers, forcing them to plant all new product.
“The rhetoric behind it is really not necessarily matched by the ease in which that type of change would occur,” Dr. Gordon said.
He wants to end the stigma of a plant based treatment with help from lawmakers.
“No one can show me an increase in emergency department visits, an increase in auto accidents from cannabis, increase in psychosis amongst young or old,” Dr. Gordon said. “To me it’s a very difficult argument when I see the benefits that my patients are achieving through the medical cannabis program at this point.”
Dr. Gordon says he’s talked with State Senator Joe Gruters and offered to go up to Tallahassee and talk to more lawmakers.