HARRISBURG, PA — Lawmakers Jim Cox (D-Berks/Lancaster) and Ed Gainey (D-Allegheny) plan to reintroduce legislation that would legalize medical marijuana in Pennsylvania. The legislation would allow PA doctors to recommend cannabis to patients who would medically benefit from such a treatment. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have similar laws.

Both legislators introduced similar bills in the 2013-14 legislative session with bipartisan support. The current measure is identical to legislation that passed the Senate 43-7 in September, but which never received a vote by the House.

“The Senate-passed bill represented months of hearings, discussions, changes and compromises with one goal in mind: helping those with medical challenges—especially children with seizure disorders—to benefit from a medicinal strain of cannabis,” Cox said. “Some children suffer hundreds of seizures a day, making normal childhood development impossible and forcing parents to helplessly watch their children suffer.”

He said prescribed narcotic cocktails of highly addictive and dangerous drugs have little effect on these disorders and often provide only a few weeks or months of pause in the decline of a child’s health.

“It is cruel and irrational to deny people medicine to alleviate their suffering—especially when we routinely prescribe far more addictive, powerful and toxic medications for the same conditions,” Gainey said.