LINCOLN (AP) — A group that wants Nebraska to allow the medicinal use of marijuana says it will lobby the Nebraska pharmacy licensing board for support.
The group, Helping End Marijuana Prohibition, wants the board to recommend that lawmakers clear the way for medical marijuana in Nebraska. But one key legislator said that’s unlikely.
Sen. Brad Ashford, chairman of the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, where any medical-marijuana bill likely would be heard, said drugs “in the Omaha area specifically, have created such a huge crisis” that he couldn’t imagine a lawmaker who would introduce a bill to make marijuana use legal.
“It’s not going to happen, even though an argument can be made for it,” Ashford told the Lincoln Journal Star.
Advocates of medicinal marijuana said it can be used to help treat bipolar and attention-deficit disorders, combat nausea from chemotherapy and serve as a painkiller for many illnesses.
Bill Hawkins, an organic farmer in Lancaster County and spokesman for Helping End Marijuana Prohibition, said marijuana would have helped his dad, who died of lung and liver cancer, and his mother, who died of lung cancer.
“Cannabis would have greatly relieved their pain without side effects,” Hawkins said.
Critics said other medications are available that eliminate any need for medical marijuana and that the dispensaries that sell medical marijuana are sometimes fronts to sell the drug to people who aren’t ill.
Marijuana is not eligible to be dispensed by a pharmacy, so state legislation would be a better first step in Nebraska, said Nebraska’s Board of Pharmacy chairman, Richard Zarek of Gothenburg.
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