CLINTON — It’s been two years since Illinois’ medical cannabis pilot program went into effect.  Although DeWitt County was not ultimately selected as a site for one of the regional dispensaries, patients with qualifying medical conditions can now get help locally applying for the program.

Medical Cannabis Outreach held its first office day recently at its Warner Court location, just off the square.  

Eric Sweatt moved to Illinois from Colorado eight years ago to help make medical cannabis legal here.
 “There were two bills here that did not pass, and when the House bill passed, I knew from being in Colorado that there was going to be a problem with doctors,” Sweatt says.

So, Sweatt started helping people go through the application process and finding doctors who would work with the program.  

“We had to find cannabis friendly doctors.”

Sweatt’s Medical Cannabis Outreach now has five offices throughout Illinois that help patients apply for the medical cannabis program, Clinton, Harrisburg, Melrose Park, Pekin and Shelbyville.  

“We’ve had great success, and I’m happy with the number of people who have come for the appointments,” Sweatt says.

Sweatt and his staff, including a physician, hold applications about once a month in the offices, during which they see from 15-60 patients.  Patients are fingerprinted, which is required by law.  They pay a fingerprint fee, a state fee, a physician’s fee, and the patient’s photo is taken, also required by law.

The staff helps patients through the entire application process and advises them on the type of medical cannabis suited for their illnesses, which can include smoking, vaping, edible cannabis, sub-lingual sprays, transdermal patches, topicals, beverages and suppositories.

Sweatt wants patients to talk to their doctors about their participation.

“We’re here to help people in a medicinal way not recreational,” Sweatt says.  “We’re hot helping them get high, we’re helping them get medicated.”

Twenty-nine state now allow some form of personal marijuana use.

The outreach works with doctors who follow the state law governing medical cannabis.  Sweatt says this is because so many physicians fear the federal laws against marijuana.

The doctors counsel patients and determine who has a qualifying medical condition among the some 40 sanctioned by the State of Illinois under the medical cannabis three-year pilot program.

“You have to have at least one of the 40 qualifying conditions,” Sweatt says.

After the application process, patients who qualify then receive prescriptions they can use at one of the legal pilot program dispensaries.

“We see as many as 120 patients a month in Illinois,” Sweatt says.

A brother and sister from central Illinois were at the Clinton office with their father during a recent clinic.  Their father, suffering from prostate cancer, was applying for the program.

“I’ve been a proponent for medical marijuana for a long time,” the son says.  “The science showed it was a great opportunity.”

Considering the number of medical uses for cannabis, he said he felt it should not be illegal.  

A traditional use for compounds derived from cannabis goes back decades in the U.S.; special eye drops used to treat glaucoma.

As soon as his father was diagnosed with cancer, “I said, ‘we’re going to do this’.”  Their father’s cancer is treatable but not curable,” his daughter said.  But, the son added, his particular type of cancer had been shown to be especially receptive to the benefits of cannabis, partly because of its ability to suppress the hormone that contributes to the disease.

His daughter also said a benefit to medical cannabis would be helping her father avoid the use of narcotics, such as opioids.

Their father said he already was aware of the research that supported the use of cannabis as part of the treatment of cancer.

The family asked not to use their names.  There still is a stigma associated with the controversial subject of medical marijuana.

Dr. Comsalter, who works with Medical Cannabis Outreach, said as more patients use medical cannabis, he felt it could help lower the numbers of people becoming addicted to opioids and heroin.  Many of the people now addicted to heroin began as patients prescribed opioids for various types of pain.

“They started using heroin at the street level because it became so much cheaper than prescription medication,” Comsalter says.

Since the objective of the medical cannabis program is to treat patients, not to get them high, Comsalter says he feels the program could make a major dent in the use of heroin.