Part 1: What Illinois cannabis patients really want
Since Illinois legalized recreational cannabis, Illinois moved into a new phase of the industry that has a prosperous future with many benefits to Illinoisans and out-of-state residents. But one segment of the industry has been left behind: registered qualifying medical patients. A trend we have noticed continue is a large gap between patients’ needs and recommendation for improving the Medical Cannabis Patient Program (MCPP) and the actual amendments to the law politicians introduce. The concerns and suggestions we hear from medical patients almost never match the new amendments introduced to the law. The following 6-articles series will address patient needs, wishes, and concerns for the MCPP using categories already established by the Americans for Safe Access (ASA) annual report.
According to the ASA, Illinois medical cardholders have seen almost no improvement, if not a decline, in program functionality, patient rights, access, affordability to medicine, and more. Each year, the ASA prepares a report that assesses legislative and regulatory improvements in medical cannabis programs across the country, including Illinois. The ASA ranked the Prairie State second out of all states that have legalized medical use of cannabis with a B+ at 71.86%, which was behind only Maine’s 76.14%. But as someone who taught in higher education for a decade, I know grade inflation when I see it.
Illinois’ “high” grading was deceiving because of the overall lack of medical cannabis patient care and low scores for all the states and the grades are “designed to show that even the states with high scores can and should make improvements, and to highlight the specific advancements that states and territories should pursue to improve medical program function and cost to patients.” Last year, Illinois had 136,530 registered medical patients in the MCPP, which was 1.08% of the state’s population. Illinois registered around 36,000 new patients in 2021. The current total number of active patients in the MCPP program as of November 30, 2022, is 136,574.
Illinois’ grade was one of the few states in which the grade had been reduced from last year’s report, from A- to B+. The report stated, “This trend demonstrates that even after initial medical programs open there is still a considerable need for lawmaker and regulator engagement with patients and stakeholders to identify challenges and make improvements that result in better outcomes for patients.” For the ASA’s survey feedback and rubric created to score these grades, click here.
Though Illinois New Joint has not conducted an official patient survey, we have fielded hundreds of questions and concerns from medical patients across Illinois, and in the series of articles, we share registered medical patients concerns and the new space medicinal cannabis now holds in Illinois. This is of course antidotal and not a replacement for the ASA report. We admire the hard work and dedication invested into the ASA report and hope for our 6-part series to be supplementary to the ASA report.
In the following 5-parts of this series, we address the same basic breakdown to Illinois’ medical cannabis program as the ASA’s report, including Program Functionality, Patient Rights, Access, Affordability to Medicine, and more. We also have adjusted and added categories to better fit the feedback we hear from patients.
Part 2 of our series highlights Health, Patient Rights, and Civil Protection, as well as Return Policies. As this series continues, we will continue to convey what we most hear from Illinois medical patients about improving the overall program, starting with the smaller concerns and ending with the biggest.
For the rest of the articles in the series find the links below:
Part 2: Health, Rights, & Civil Protection
