A Minor Patient Shall Be Required to Obtain Two Medical Recommendations From Two Board Certified Physicians
This is Tulsa Cannabis Business Attorney Isaiah Brydie, where we operate OK Cannabis Law Office. We do Oklahoma medical cannabis law.
Now some of you may or may not know that we co-authored State Question 813. Oklahoma State Question 813 is a constitutional amendment that will help fix the problems of our Oklahoma medical marijuana program that our wonderful legislatures and others have caused.
So today we want to talk about minors, minor patients. Are you aware that minor patients must keep up with their recommendations, their paper recommendations? They have two of them, and they must have them on them when they come into a dispensary.
They must have them on them if they have their medication on them.
So with that being said, we’re going to start, and we’re going to read to you about State Question 813 has in this section regarding minor patients.
A minor patient shall be required to obtain two medical recommendations from two board certified physicians. This is an unchanged, currently it’s this way and we left it that way, we felt that that was appropriate.
A minor patient under the age of 13 years of age shall be permitted to medicate with inhalants… Shall not be permitted to medicate with inhalants without a specific written order from two board-certified physicians, and education through a not-for-profit organization providing education for minors on inhalants.
What this means is both of the recommending physicians that are board certified must agree that a child under the age, or a minor, under the age of 13 can use inhalants as a medical treatment. Now this doesn’t mean that they’re going to be smoking marijuana, this doesn’t mean that they’re not going to be smoking, it doesn’t mean that they’re not going to be using vapes.
It depends on what the parent, the child, and the physicians recommend. Now and it also could mean that they are using an inhaler with THC in it, okay? There are different mechanisms for delivery.
So an inhalant can be several things. It could be a nose spray that you put up your nose, it could be an inhaler like for people that have asthma, so it could be those and not actually the smoking of. So it could be the smoking of, it just depends on what that patient needs.
A minor patient age 13 years of age or older shall be permitted to medicate with inhalers with a specific written order from one board certified recommending physician, and education through a not-for-profit organization providing education to minors on inhalants.
Now whether they’re age 13 or younger, or age 13 and older, if they are recommended to do inhalants they will be required to get some education provided by a not-for-profit organization for minors on inhalants. And currently we do have one in the state, we suspect we’ll have others eventually, but we do have one.
We’re familiar with them and we love their program, but this was written before we got to know them and we really think that this is imperative, that education go along with the responsibility of being able to do inhalants.
Within 60 days of the passage of this article, the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority shall add two minor patient licenses in large bold print, one of the two, for minors. Inhalants allowed, inhalants not allowed.
So if the doctors do not sign off on a child or a minor being able to use inhalants, it will say inhalants not allowed. If the doctor or doctor agrees that the child should be able to do inhalants, then it will say inhalants are allowed, so they will no longer have to carry their recommendations with them, their documents.
Applications for a caregiver license for a minor patient shall be made at the time of the application for the minor patient. A minor patient shall be permitted multiple caregiver licenses to encompass all adults who assist in raising/rearing the licensed child. All right, so with that being said, we all know that the dynamics of a family are much different than it was in the fifties and sixties.
Children go between different houses to get their parental needs met. Mom and dad have separated or remarried, so we could have two parents living in two locations, and the child goes back and forth between the parents.
If you only have one parent that can purchase the medication, what if something happens to that one parent and the other parent has to keep the minor child for an extended period of time?
So it makes no sense that everyone doesn’t have the ability to go purchase the medication that the child needs.
So with that being said, you’ve got a mom and a stepdad in one house possibly, or could just be mom we mean, but it could be, say mom is sick, she just can’t get out of bed.
A child needs medication, dad lives in another county, and it’s not conducive for him to come and go get it, but there’s a stepdad in the house. But dad can’t get it because he doesn’t have a caregiver’s license. So the child goes without medication and that’s just not acceptable.
So say the child is at dad’s, dad doesn’t have a license but mom’s sent the medication, but mom’s had a family emergency, she’s got to go out of state and the child has to stay with dad for an extended period of time. Dad can’t get the child’s medicine, mom forgot to take care of it. We all do that when we’re experiencing a family emergency.
So it only makes sense that if someone is taking a child for an extended period of time, or if the child is going between different homes, each of those persons is able to obtain legally child’s medication.
With that being said this ends the section on minors, in this section. We’ve got some other things regarding minors in other sections. But we highly recommend that you check out State Question 813.