IL Again Weighs Expanding MMJ Qualifying Conditions

Medical marijuana businesses in Illinois hope the third time’s a charm for expanding the state’s list of approved conditions for MMJ treatment.

The state’s Medical Cannabis Advisory Board will meet Monday to discuss whether to add 15 new conditions to the current list of 39 approved conditions, according to the Associated Press.

The proposed conditions include: chronic pain, migraines, post-traumatic stress disorder, irritable bowel syndrome, Lyme disease, osteoarthritis, autism, chronic low-level depression, and diabetes.

The board has approved many of these conditions twice before.

But the director of the state’s health department, Nirav Shah, has twice rejected the board’s recommendations, most recently in January and before that last fall. In each case, Shah said the state needed more time to evaluate how the program was going.

As of April 6, the state had approved 5,600 medical marijuana patient applications, up from about 4,000 in late January.

The state’s medical marijuana law allows people to suggest new diseases for the program twice annually. The 15 conditions were suggested through petition in January, meaning that medical cannabis advocates will have one more chance this year to expand the qualifying conditions list.