Politics
Congressional Amendment To Let Military Veterans Get Medical Marijuana Recommendations Through The VA Advances To Floor Vote
A powerful congressional committee is allowing an amendment that would let military veterans receive recommendations for medical marijuana through their doctors at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to advance to a vote on the House floor.
The proposal from Reps. Brian Mast (R-FL), Dave Joyce (R-OH) and Dina Titus (D-NV), if enacted, would prevent VA from enforcing a longstanding directive that has blocked its providers from assisting veterans with registering for state medical cannabis programs.
Under current policy, VA doctors can discuss marijuana use with their patients, but they cannot fill out forms to help them actually get legal access to cannabis. As a result, veterans need to seek outside, often expensive, services from separate providers instead of just being able to get assistance from their own doctors at VA.
That would change under the new amendment from the co-chairs of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, which is being offered to the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act.
The House Rules Committee on Tuesday determined that the proposal can be considered in floor votes, expected later this week.
The veterans medical marijuana amendment reads:
“SEC. __. None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Veterans Affairs in this Act may be used to enforce Veterans Health Directive 1315 as it relates to—
(1) the policy stating that ‘VHA providers are prohibited from completing forms or registering Veterans for participation in a State-approved marijuana program’;
(2) the directive for the ‘Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Operations and Management’ to ensure that ‘medical facility Directors are aware that it is VHA policy for providers to assess Veteran use of marijuana but providers are prohibited from recommending, making referrals to or completing paperwork for Veteran participation in State marijuana programs’; and
(3) the directive for the ‘VA Medical Facility Director’ to ensure that ‘VA facility staff are aware of the following’ ‘[t]he prohibition on recommending, making referrals to or completing forms and registering Veterans for participation in State-approved marijuana programs.'”
While similar proposals on veterans’ medical marijuana access have been passed by both the House of Representatives and Senate in past years, they have never been enacted into law.
Last year, when the House- and Senate-passed language was left out of the final bill sent to President Donald Trump, Mast told Marijuana Moment that the exclusion was “ridiculous.”
“It was a great and easy opportunity to do so, and a sensical thing to move forward—and detrimental to veterans to not do so,” he said.
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The current amendment comes just weeks after medical marijuana was rescheduled under federal law by the Trump administration, a major policy and political development that advocates hope could boost the chances of the veterans-focused reform being enacted this year.
A separate amendment to the military and veterans spending bill that the Rules Committee is also allowing to receive a floor vote seeks to raise awareness about the benefits of psychedelic and other therapies for military veterans.
Sponsored by Reps. Lou Correa (D-CA) and Jack Bergman (R-MI), who co-chair the Congressional Psychedelics Advancing Therapies Caucus, the amendment’s description says it “increases and decreases funding for the Medical and Prosthetic Research account at the Department of Veterans Affairs to emphasize the importance of the Department’s research on areas benefiting veterans such as oncology, traumatic brain injury care, psychedelic therapies, and assistive devices.”
Meanwhile in Congress, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies approved a bill last month containing provisions that would block federal officials from taking further steps to reschedule cannabis.
Separately, the House Appropriations Committee approved a spending bill and an attached report that expresses concerns about health risks from cannabis-derived products, while also encouraging research into the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics.
The full House also recently passed a Farm Bill with provisions aimed at aiding industrial hemp producers—but without any language to delay or alter the federal recriminalization of hemp THC products that’s scheduled to take effect later this year.
A new report from the Congressional Research Service details the scope and limitations of the federal marijuana rescheduling move.
