Ohio Petition Seeks to Add ‘Browns/Bengals Fan’ As Cannabis Qualifying Condition

At least one football fan in Ohio has embraced their Democratic right to petition and is asking regulators to grant them medical cannabis access to treat their post-match misery, The Cincinnati Enquirer reports.

The Ohio State Medical Board confirmed this week it has received a petition to make being either a Cleveland Browns or Cincinnati Bengals fan into a qualifying condition for the state’s medical cannabis program.

The board is meeting on February 12 to consider 28 different petitions, others of which included requests for access to treat conditions such as anxiety, depression, and autism. The sports fan petition is quite unlikely to advance further, however, as the board requires input from medical specialists about why each proposed condition should be accepted.

Last year, Ohio regulators received 110 petitions for new cannabis qualifying conditions. Many petitions were either incomplete or made for conditions that were already allowed, however, and the board eventually narrowed down that number to just six conditions: opioid addiction, autism, general anxiety, chronic anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Then, the board consulted medical professionals about the remaining petitions’ validity before rejecting all of the conditions — this year, any petitions that mirror those conditions must be presented with “new scientific information” to be considered again by the board.

Ohio’s medical cannabis industry officially launched in January 2019; in September, the only patient advocate serving on Ohio’s Medical Marijuana Advisory Committee was forcibly removed.

The Cincinnati City Council, meanwhile, voted to decriminalize cannabis possession throughout the city last June.