New York’s First Medical Marijuana Patients

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Brittany Barger starts every morning by swallowing between 10 to 15 pills just so that she can make it out of her bed. The 27-year-old hopes that cannabis is the answer to restoring her appetite and relieving the nausea symptoms associated with her stage four cancer diagnosis.

She is one of New York’s first patients looking to substitute prescription medications with heavy side effects for natural plant medicine at one of the recently opened medical marijuana dispensaries.

“I don’t have an appetite. I don’t have hunger at all. For me to be able to take a pill with side effects that benefit me instead of putting me at high risk for complications, that’s what I can do for myself. That’s why I’m here,” Barger told lohud reporters at Vireo Health of New York dispensary in White Plains.

Barger’s cancer metastasized making her ineligible for surgery. The chemotherapy stopped working. She was left with few options to treat her pain and stop her vomiting. She heard New York was considering legislation to legalize cannabis for medical use shortly after her diagnosis.

“I kept my eye on it in the news and when the opportunity came, I talked to my doctor about it and cod my card,” Barger said.

Though she knows that the marijuana capsules she started taking won’t save her life, it has relieved suffering. It has reduced the amount of pain medication she takes. Her parents were overjoyed when she finally felt hungry and had something to eat.

“Even though I was still alive, my life that I had planned and worked for was over, and I’m never going to be a mom and never have my own child, and that was huge for me,” she said. “But knowing that I have some say and, hopefully, I will get an increase in quality of life and get some of my independence back; that’s my biggest goal.”

Barger told CBS Local  that the marijuana capsules don’t make her feel high and that it’s more about what they don’t make her feel. The process for receiving her medical marijuana card was fairly simple. She visited a doctor who filed an online application and left with a certificate. She answered additional questions for the State online and later received her medical marijuana card from the New York State Department of Health by mail.

“It’s [medical marijuana] like a taboo,” Barger told News 12 Westchester. “No one wants to talk about it. If this is something that can help people… why not?”

You can learn more about the state’s medical marijuana program at www.health.ny.gov/regulations/medical_marijuana/.