Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker may have disdain for marijuana, but he truly loathes the fed’s recent request to turn over detailed information on Massachusetts’ marijuana patients.
Trump’s deputy director of the National Marijuana Initiative (NMI), Dan Quigley, fired off a letter to Massachusetts health officials asking for data on the “age, gender and medical condition” of the state’s estimated “40,000 registered medical marijuana patients.”
This morning, Marijuana Majority’s Tom Angell shared the fed’s request:
Good day,
My name is Dale Quigley, Deputy Coordinator for the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) / National Marijuana Initiative (NMI) program in the United States. We are currently doing demographic research into states with medical provisions for marijuana and the use of a state issued identification card.
We are interested in information as it relates to marijuana registry cards issued by your state for the last 5 calendar years (2012 – 2016). For each year, what was the demographic summary and totals for marijuana cardholders by:
- Age of cardholder
- Gender of cardholder
- Cited medical reason / classification why card was issued
If the data exist in an existing report or online database, would you please provide the correct link?
Thank you in advance for your consideration with this request. Please respond via email.
DQ
Quigley, a former Colorado police officer, has vowed the gathered data would not be utilized to ramp up a federal enforcement of state marijuana laws or identify patients, according to the Boston Globe,
“I have no idea where this is going to take us yet,” Quigley noted. But so far, “there are no black helicopters warming up in the bullpen.”
The deputy director of the National Marijuana Initiative said the requested data would be utilized for a new federal research project. The study seeks to identify any correlation between how strictly states regulate medicinal marijuana and the rate of marijuana use among different age groups within in those states.
Cooperative but concerned, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) turned over some of the requested data on the state’s estimated 40,000 medical marijuana patients, saying, “the data was public record.”
While the Massachusetts DPH handed over data to Quigley and the NMI, relating to a patient’s age or gender, concern over Quigley’s request for access to the qualifying conditions of thousands of patients in Massachusetts has so far been rejected.
A Massachusetts Department of Public Health representative noted – “protecting patient privacy is a major consideration of our continued review.”
Cognizant that skewed data points create biased research results, Beth Collins, a Senior Director of Government Relations and External Affairs at Americans for Safe Access, informed the Globe, “He’s obviously biased.”
Biased or not, if Quigley’s study is to be considered informative and instructive, Collins posed an intriguing question, “Why isn’t a researcher doing it?”
credit:marijuana.com
