Pot patients get state reprieve after questions about their docs - The Denver Post

Pot patients get state reprieve after questions about their docs - The Denver Post

About 2,000 people who were recently notified that their state applications for medical marijuana were rejected because their doctors weren't eligible to refer them for the drug got a temporary reprieve Wednesday from the state.

Ann Hause, an attorney for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said the patients can continue to get marijuana until rules governing which doctors can prescribe marijuana are formalized.

Hause, who appeared Wednesday at a meeting of the Medical Marijuana Advisory Committee, said hearings on the issue likely won't begin until March.

"They are in limbo. I can easily think that people would be confused," said Mark Salley, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

The confusion stems from a law passed this year that prohibited doctors not in good standing from recommending patients for medical marijuana. But when the department interpreted that to include doctors with restricted as well as conditional licenses, many doctors objected.

"It improperly punishes a whole host of physicians," Kari Hershey, an attorney for the Colorado Medical Society, told the advisory committee Wednesday.

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