Good afternoon Madam Chair and committee members, my name is Jeremy Murphree, I'm a Lyme disease patient in Greenville, my doctor practices in Virginia, and I work with Jill Swing at the South Carolina Compassionate Care Alliance.
My doctors …
Good afternoon Madam Chair and committee members, my name is Jeremy Murphree, I'm a Lyme disease patient in Greenville, my doctor practices in Virginia, and I work with Jill Swing at the South Carolina Compassionate Care Alliance.
My doctors treatment has helped bring me close to complete remission from the disfiguring skin condition, Morgellons, which causes slow healing skin lesions to form all across the body. These ulcerations are not self inflicted, but because of the lack of education about Lyme disease, doctors often wrongly attribute the dermopathy to mental illness.
Lyme disease is shown to be associated with several medical conditions including cardiovascular disease, mental health conditions including treatment resistant depression, anxiety, and psychosis, cancer, autism, aggressive behavior, ischemic stroke, and chronic pain at any age. The standard tests for Lyme disease are reportedly between 40-60% accurate, meaning a patient can test negative but still harbor the infection. Our CDC states the incidence of Lyme disease is approaching half a million cases every year, yet Lyme disease is rarely considered by even our best doctors. My doctor as stated, is well out of state.
Medical marijuana has several reported applications for Lyme patients, of whom it is demonstrated that 20% on average do not respond to conventional treatment.
Concerning S423;
First, Marijuana is produced into hundreds of strains, each capable of addressing specific conditions. Because people develop a tolerance, a variety of strains are typically available in dispensaries, allowing patients to change to a different phenotype that produces similar medical effects. This legislation prevents patients from knowing what strain is in their medicine, and from changing to a different strain when they inevitably develop tolerance.
Second, science has shown that smoking whole flower marijuana is the most effective administration for chronic pain. Studies have also demonstrated th..
