COLORADO SPRINGS — Young men, statistically speaking, are a healthy bunch.
Which has state health officials wondering: Why are so many of them signing up for medical marijuana?
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which oversees the state’s medical marijuana registry, reported Thursday that it has been flooded with new applications in the last year — a growing number of them from young men diagnosed with severe pain.
“This dramatic increase in an age group that is not expected to suffer from a chronic debilitating condition is concerning,” Colorado’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ned Calonge said in a news release.
Brian Vicente, a medical marijuana advocate who has fought previous efforts to limit the marijuana law, said it shouldn’t be. “Pain and illness strike people of all ages, and ultimately I don’t think the state should question or undermine a doctor-patient relationship.”
Applications for the registry, which require a physician’s authorization to be eligible, increased from 3,302 in July 2008 to 8,918 this year. Nearly half of those new applications, 4,282, came April through June.
So far this year nearly 1,800 of the applications were for men under 30, the majority of which were diagnosed with severe pain, the state said. Applications among this group, which is about 22 percent of the total, are also fast-growing. They went from about 70 a month in 2008 to 264 in May and 364 last month.
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