Congress Abandons Effort To Let VA Doctors Recommend Medical Marijuana On Veterans Day
VA doctors recommending medical marijuana just got kneecapped by Congress—on Veterans Day, no less. In a season of patriotic speeches and poppy pins, lawmakers advanced a must-pass spending package that quietly stripped out bipartisan provisions that would have let Veterans Affairs clinicians recommend cannabis in states where it’s legal. Both chambers had already nodded along earlier this year, each with its own flavor of reform baked into appropriations. Then, in the smoke-filled back room of negotiation, the language vanished. For veterans seeking medical cannabis for PTSD, chronic pain, or insomnia, that’s not a headline—it’s a door slammed shut. For the Michigan dispensary owner, the New Mexico caregiver, the Florida retiree—this is federal cannabis policy at its most perverse: say you support the troops, then block the simplest path to relief.
Here’s the rub. The House version would have forced VA to stop enforcing pieces of its Directive 1315 that tell doctors: don’t complete forms, don’t recommend, don’t register your patients for state cannabis programs. The Senate variant went broader, barring VA from interfering with a veteran’s right to join a state medical marijuana program, denying services because of it, or muzzling VA providers from making appropriate recommendations. Neither would have legalized anything; both were narrow, revenue-neutral guardrails to let VA operate sensibly within state law. And yet, the negotiated bill carried none of it. If you’re keeping score: years of bipartisan votes, zero enactments. It’s the kind of Washington loop that drives reformers to street corners and veterans to self-medicate—while state markets charge ahead and neighbors like Virginia plot regulated sales, as seen in Virginia Senator Is ‘Very Optimistic’ About Legalizing Marijuana Sales Under New Pro-Reform Governor.
Inside VA clinics, the reality is messier than any directive. Providers know many patients already use cannabis, often to taper off benzodiazepines, to cut back on opioids, to sleep through the night without white-knuckling the sheets. But policy chills the room. Doctors can “discuss” cannabis in theory, then hit a wall when paperwork for a state program lands on the desk. Veterans learn to navigate two systems with a wink and a nod, hoping honesty won’t boomerang into notes that complicate care. It’s Kafka with a stethoscope. Medical cannabis access for veterans isn’t a culture-war wedge anymore; it’s a clinical workflow issue, a quality-of-life issue, a basic consistency issue. States acknowledge reality. The federal government, at least for now, prefers plausible deniability.
As if that weren’t enough, the same appropriations machinery is also flirting with a very different kind of crackdown: a Senate-backed plan to effectively ban most hemp products containing THC. The details are wonky; the impact is not. Small businesses that survived the post-2018 Farm Bill whiplash now face another rug pull. There was even an attempt to shield the hemp industry that went nowhere, captured in Senate Rejects Attempt To Save Hemp Industry From THC Ban In Key Spending Bill. The political winds? Blowing hot. A White House spokesperson says the former president backs the prohibitionist turn, a storyline unpacked in Trump ‘Supports’ Hemp THC Ban That’s Advancing In Senate, White House Says, while industry attorneys are already throwing red flags on constitutional and commercial grounds, as detailed in Industry Lawyers Condemn ‘Overbroad’ And ‘Disastrous’ Congressional Push To Ban Hemp THC Products. So in one breath, Congress declines to empower VA doctors to make evidence-informed recommendations; in the next, it toys with squeezing a lawful hemp marketplace to death. Federal cannabis policy is starting to look less like a strategy and more like a coin flip.
What comes next is the usual Washington two-step: public gratitude for service, private indifference to practical reform. Advocates will press to revive VA medical cannabis provisions in future appropriations or standalone bills. House and Senate champions can try again, and they probably will. Veterans’ groups, clinicians, and state regulators will keep sending the same message: let doctors practice within the laws their patients actually live under. Meanwhile, businesses and patients brace for whatever shakes out of the hemp fight. If you want a litmus test for whether Congress can handle cannabis policy like adults, it’s this—stop making veterans navigate a maze for medicine their states already legalized. Until then, those of us who care about rational cannabis policy—and the people it’s supposed to serve—will keep the lights on, the questions sharp, and the receipts handy; and if you’re looking for a federally compliant way to experience the plant while policymakers dither, explore our premium THCA flower at our shop: our shop.
