Terms to Terminate Medical Marijuana Services: Caregivers v. Providers
on November 10th, 2009 at 8:00 pmCOLORADO — The term “caregiver” is not reasonable for what medical marijuana providers and dispensaries do for their patients.
My mom is a caregiver. She helps people bathe, makes sure they take their meds, lives with them to cook, clean, and do everything else to make her patients’ lives better. But she does not know anything about marijuana, benefits of it, growing it, etc.
Here is the problem I want everyone to consider. Dispensaries and medical marijuana providers can never fill the services that my mom provides. And my mom cannot provide what the dispensaries do for the patients–which is, in most cases, more than just provide medicine, but a host of other services. These are specialized, separate type of services!
Most importantly, even if someone tried to do both, medical marijuana growers can best provide for the patients if they focused on quality, and by necessity of demand quantity production. No caregiver in capacity of my mom will be able to focus on that very well, because medical grade cannabis in all its different varietals and forms of consumption, the time and knowledge it takes to grow them and create the different medical products, and guiding the patients on which is more appropriate for them, require specialization.
So, what the medical marijuana dispensaries and providers do is more similar to chiropractors, acupuncturists, massage therapists, and other health and wellness services. Just like medical marijuana services, these services are recognized by the medical community as beneficial for the patients. Why in the world are medical marijuana providers supposed to have the legal term “caregivers”, when all these other services that are similar are called “providers”?
Why are lawmakers in CO colluding the issue and making this a point of confusion? I made a guess, but hopefully I’m wrong.
