Since losing his son, Ryan, in 2018 to stage 4 pancreatic cancer when he was just 41 years old, Jim Bartell has been on a mission.
“I want to make it possible for people to die with some dignity and to be able to have a quality of life that allows them to communicate with their family and friends before they die,” Bartell told the Southern California Record.
The grieving San Diego father authored a bill, called Compassionate Access to Medical Cannabis Act or Ryan’s Law, that would remove obstacles that might prevent hospitals and other medical facilities from administering medical cannabis to people who are terminally ill.
That’s because as Bartell’s son was nearing the end of his life, a hospital rejected him and his cannabis medication, which was a potent combination of THC and CBD.
“I really couldn't talk to him much because they put him on fentanyl for pain and fentanyl is a hundred times more powerful than morphine so they were just putting Ryan to sleep,” Bartell said. “During one of his rare waking moments, he grabbed my hand and asked me to get him off fentanyl because he didn’t want to spend his last few weeks sleeping.”
When the family finally found a hospital that agreed to administer the cannabis medication four times a day sublingually rather than fentanyl, they saw a miraculous change in Ryan’s condition.
“He would sleep through the night and wake up pain-free,” Bartell said. “He was talking, texting his friends, and asking them to visit him. During his last two and a half weeks, he met with dozens of visitors and he spent an hour every day talking to his son just the two of them.”
After Ryan died, Bartell began to research what various states were doing to regulate the use of cannabis among the terminally ill confined to hospitals, which lead him to write Senate Bill 311 with the help of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, which allows the use of cannabis for end-of-life care.
“A few months ago, we sent a memo to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees and regulates Medicare and Medicaid,” Bartell said. “They wrote back two weeks later saying they have no regulations that prohibit hospitals from using cannabis in the hospital.”
Senator Ben Hueso (D-California) sent a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra asking him to clarify whether hospitals would still receive Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements if they allowed cannabis use on their premises for patients who are dying.
“I’m respectfully requesting that CMS & HHS provide clarification assuring Medicare/Medicaid providers they won’t lose reimbursements for allowing medical cannabis use on their premises. This would go a long way to help hospital staff, security & above all patients,” Hueso tweeted on July 29.
Hueso has since received a response from at least two politicians, according to Bartell.
“The senator got a call from Becerra’s office, acknowledging the letter and saying they were looking into it,” he said. “He also got a call from the governor's office, acknowledging that they'd received a letter and had forwarded it to several people in the governor's administration.”
Senate Bill 311 has passed the full Senate and one Assembly committee. It’s now awaiting action on the Assembly floor before potentially being sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his signature. If approved, SB 311 would require that hospitals and certain types of healthcare facilities in the State of California allow terminally ill patient to use medical cannabis for treatment and/or pain relief.