Just this Tuesday Illinois judge Neil Cohen made a strong statement to the Department of Public Health that made Post traumatic Stress Disorder a disease that’s eligible for medical marijuana prescription, Carla Johnson of the Associative Press reports. The case came to the Judge’s attention when an Iraqi war veteran filed a lawsuit in frustration with Governor Bruce Rauner’s recent rejections of a medical marijuana advisory board.
“In a lawsuit filed by an Iraq war veteran, Judge Neil Cohen ordered Illinois Department of Public Health Director Nirav Shah to add PTSD within 30 days. It’s the first decision among eight lawsuits filed by patients disappointed with across-the-board rejections by Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration of recommendations from an advisory board on medical marijuana.”
Judge Cohen didn’t stop at making the Illinois Department of Public Health add PTSD to their eligible diseases within the next month. He ripped into Director Nirav Shah for his conduct on the case;
“In the case of PTSD, the advisory board voted unanimously to add it, but Shah, a Rauner appointee, conducted his own investigation and rejected PTSD applying a standard of medical evidence that “appears nowhere in the Act or the Department’s rules,” the judge wrote. Shah not only deprived the plaintiff of his right to due process but also “was contrary to the plain language of the Department’s rules,” Cohen wrote.
Shah and Rauner’s conduct related to Illinois medical marijuana policies has ignored well founded medical evidence and it’s nice to see a Judge not be afraid to call them out for it. This ruling also does what Medical Marijuana in Illinois was intended to do which is help people suffering gain another option that isn’t addictive painkillers or other dangerous drugs as the lawyer of the veteran who filed this lawsuit Daniel Paul Jabs explains:
“Veteran Daniel Paul Jabs, who filed the lawsuit, “feels this decision gives him and other military veterans suffering from PTSD the respect they deserve from the state and the governor’s office,” attorney Michael Goldberg said Tuesday.
Rauner for over a year has resisted expanding the Illinois Medical Marijuana Pilot Program and has avoided adding new diseases. Incredibly, terminal illness is still not one of the qualifying conditions for the program which could change due to a new bill that Rauner and his team are considering. Judge Cohn’s ruling adds more weight to the pressure on Rauners team to adjust and progress to Marijuana’s burgeoning place in the medical field and society in general.
