Low THC Oil in Personal Care Homes & Assisted Living Facilities
The dying man’s son brought a little padded envelope to my office. He was so nervous, in the midst of his grief, and it seemed absurd -- he’d come to ask my permission.
“Please, Jey, may I give him this? He wants to try. In these last few days. It could give him relief, some peace, while we say goodbye.”
And I had to tell him, “no.”
The choice of cannabis for pain relief and medical treatment is a deeply personal one, but 90 percent of hospice professionals support medical cannabis treatments. More than half of Americans live in states where those treatments are available and 18 states now allow ANY adult to use cannabis. But terminally ill residents in my facility may not. Our hands are tied.
Do my residents deserve more pain, more seizures, more suffering because they happen to live in Georgia?
It should not be my job to say, “No, we can’t do that here,” when clinicians and a growing number seniors report cannabis gives them “improved overall health, quality of life, day-to-day functioning, and improvement in pain.”
To be clear, it won’t be my job to say “yes,” either. That is a question for residents and doctors.
What providers need is clarity. We need cannabis-specific education to understand what treatments are suitable, and guidance from lawmakers on what ‘medical marijuana cards’ actually mean.
Families can freely access cannabis treatments: smokable flowers; over-the-counter CBD products; oils, vaporizers, edibles, topical formulas; some legal, some not; some with a ‘high’ and some without.
What they can’t access is reliable guidance on what’s appropriate for their loved one. They’re afraid to ask, and clinicians and caregivers are afraid to answer. In the haze of legal worries, some very real concerns (about product safety, efficacy, side effects, drug interactions) barely enter the discussion.
We should not be keeping such a potentially beneficial treatment away from patients who both value and demand it.
Ask any lawmaker in Georgia, they’ll tell you a medical cannabis program is “coming soon.” But patients and their families don’t have time to wait. Find out how you to become an advocate by contacting us.