Illinois may miss a deadline to rule on proposals for more qualifying conditions for medical marijuana. The main sponsor of the program in the General Assembly says he’s not worried.
Monday went by without Illinois Public Health Director Nirav Shah ruling on whether to add 11 illnesses to the 40 to be covered when the state’s first medical marijuana dispensaries open. That will likely be sometime in the fall.
The list of recommendations from Illinois’ Medical Cannabis Advisory Board include Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, osteoarthritis, and migraines.
State Representative Lou Lang -- a Skokie Democrat – says, while the deadline should have been met, panel has already received even more petitions for qualifying conditions. That includes some for the same ones the board previously approved.
Lang expects Shah to eventually sign off on them, issuing his changes through the legislature’s joint committee on administrative rules.
“And hopefully he will do it by emergency rule, so it can be done in time for the first dispensaries to open,” Lang said. “I remain hopeful that they’ll do their job, and do their work, and the fact that they’ve gone through the deadline is of some concern, but I have every reason to believe that they’ll make a decision.”
A spokesperson for the state Department of Public Health referred a request for comment on medical marijuana qualifying conditions to Governor Bruce Rauner’s office.
Rauner spokesperson Katherine Kelly says recommendations from the medical cannabis board “remain under review.”