Medical Marijuana: Reasonable and Necessary Medical Care for Injured Workers?
Dispensaries are thriving throughout the nation, including in Pennsylvania, where medical cannabis has been legal since 2016.
May 23, 2020 at 04:26 PM
8 minute read
Make no mistake about it. Medical marijuana is no longer a trend. It is part of the mainstream. It is now legal in 33 states, both red and blue. Dispensaries are thriving throughout the nation, including in Pennsylvania, where medical cannabis has been legal since 2016. Its proponents champion it as a weapon in the fight against the opioid crisis, touting it as an effective pain relief option to highly addictive narcotic drugs like OxyContin.Moreover, it is gaining acceptance as a treatment method for conditions frequently seen in workers' compensation cases, such as neuropathy, post traumatic stress disorder and chronic pain. It is also increasingly being found to be reasonable and necessary medical treatment for workers' compensation claimants in multiple jurisdictions around the country.
Yet here in Pennsylvania, employers and workers' compensation carriers remain in legal limbo, waiting on judicial guidance from the state's highest courts in the face of ever increasing claims from injured workers to pay for medical marijuana. Will it be considered reasonable and necessary medical treatment under the Pennsylvania Workers' Compensation Act? Right now, it might seem that the best way to answer that question would be to shake a Magic 8 Ball. But the outcome can be better predicted by reading the tea leaves and analyzing how the issue of "marijuana as reasonable medical care" has been decided by courts in other states where it is legal.
Over five years ago, a series of opinions came out of the New Mexico Court of Appeals that addressed the viability of medical marijuana usage for a work injury as well as payment in workers' compensation cases. At that time, they were the sole decisions the workers' compensation community could look to for direction. In the cases of Vialpando v. Ben's Automotive Services and Redwood Fire & Casualty, 331 P.3d. 975 (N.M. Ct. App. 2014), cert. denied, 331P.3d 924 (2014), Maez v. Riley Industrial and Chartis, 347 P.3d 732 (2015) and Lewis v. American General Media and Gallagher Bassett Services, 355 P. 3d 850 (2015) the court found that medical marijuana was reasonable and necessary to treat chronic pain from work injuries and held that employers and carriers had to pay for it.
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
NOT FOR REPRINT
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Law Firms Mentioned
Trending Stories
- 1Wine, Dine and Grind (Through the Weekend): Summer Associates Thirst For Experience in 'Real Matters'
- 2The Law Firm Disrupted: For Big Law Names, Shorter is Sweeter
- 3The 'Biden Effect' on Senior Attorneys: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
- 4BD Settles Thousands of Bard Hernia Mesh Lawsuits
- 5'You Are Not Alone': 120 Sex Assault Victims Plan to Sue Sean 'Diddy' Combs
Featured Firms
Law Offices of Gary Martin Hays & Associates, P.C.
(470) 294-1674
Law Offices of Mark E. Salomone
(857) 444-6468
Smith & Hassler
(713) 739-1250