Oregon senator Robert Kruse is sponsoring Oregon Senate Bill 777 which aims to reduce the number of ailments medical marijuana can be used for as well creating stricter criteria regarding it’s use with ailments that would remain allowable. Additionally it would require patients to have a doctor verify their illness & eligibility every six months.

Some of the new restrictions would remove general ailments such as “cancer” & “severe nausea”, with very specific criteria such as “Severe nausea caused by chemotherapy”. This would essentially force someone with cancer to undergo chemotherapy if they wanted to be able to benefit from medical marijuana treatment. This would also make it harder for people who may be suffering from digestive ailments like Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Inflammatory Bowel Disease & Gastroparesis.

Senator Kruse’s reasoning appears to be anecdotal evidence that there is “a lot of marijuana usage in southern Oregon”. Kruse isn’t alone as there have been many other bills introduced over the last few months that also attempt to restrict medical marijuana.

The bill has met some opposition & many are speaking out against it. Kruse himself feels the bill will have a hard time getting passed in the Democratically controlled Senate.  He still expects some changes to the medical marijuana laws to come about out of the current legislative session.