Colorado’s dispute over which doctors can recommend medical marijuana could become more confusing this week when state health authorities consider tighter limits at the same time lawmakers debate conflicting rules.
One question is whether doctors with conditions on their medical licenses – such as a surgeon being banned from surgery after developing arthritis – should be able to recommend pot.
The Colorado Board of Health also plans to flesh out how well doctors have to know patients before recommending marijuana.
The proposed regulations address what lawmakers called for last year by requiring a “bona fide” relationship between doctors and patients – designed to discourage so-called “marijuana mills” in which doctors recommend pot to people after only brief visits.
Some 1,300 people who applied for medical marijuana cards were rejected late last year by state health officials because their recommendations came from doctors with license conditions.
The doctors – and the Colorado Medical Society – argued that barring all doctors with conditions from recommending pot is too broad because many doctors’ conditions don’t affect their ability to prescribe or recommend drugs.
One of them is Dr. Abraham Grinberg, a 64-year-old Denver physician who once focused on neonatal care until a hand tremor made surgery impossible.
Grinberg then turned to meeting with patients about medical marijuana until dozens of them got rejection letters. Grinberg now works as a Spanish language medical translator while waiting to hear if he can treat patients again.
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