By Matthew Sturdevant
HARTFORD — A board of physicians on Wednesday recommended adding Lou Gehrig’s disease and ulcerative colitis to the existing list of medical conditions that make a patient eligible to use medical marijuana in Connecticut.
The Medical Marijuana Program Board of Physicians voted 3-1 to recommend adding amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease — and ulcerative colitis, but they split 2-2 on including Fabry disease.
Two doctors, Godfrey D. Pearlson and Deepak Cyril D’Souza, voted against adding Fabry disease, while Jonathan A. Kost and Vincent R. Carlesi voted to include it in the marijuana program. D’Souza was the dissenting vote on including ALS and ulcerative colitis.
Their recommendations will be reviewed by consumer protection Commissioner Jonathan A. Harris.
“The commissioner may choose to accept or reject any or all of the board’s recommendations with regard to choosing to promulgate a regulation to add any condition,” state Department of Consumer Protection spokeswoman Claudette Carveth said in a statement.
Any change to the medical marijuana program is subject to a process that includes a hearing and public comments, review by the attorney general, and a vote by the General Assembly’s regulation review committee.
The attorney general’s office will soon consider other ailments that the board of physicians has already recommended, and which the consumer protection commissioner allowed to proceed in the process. Those ailments are sickle cell disease; severe psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis; and post-laminectomy syndrome with chronic radiculopathy — recurring back pain after surgery. They could be added to the program sometime this summer.
