Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear recently signed an executive order that added 15 qualifying conditions to his state’s medical marijuana program. However, existing evidence does not support the use of marijuana as a safe and effective treatment for these conditions.
The 15 qualifying conditions are: sickle cell anemia, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson’s disease, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), Huntington’s disease, muscular dystrophy, cachexia or wasting syndrome, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, neuropathies, severe arthritis, fibromyalgia, glaucoma, and terminal illness.
However, multiple credible sources indicate that marijuana should not be used as a treatment for any of the conditions.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved marijuana for the treatment of any disease or condition, meaning that marijuana, in a technical sense, is not a real medicine even if it is recommended by a doctor. The American Medical Association recommends against the use of non-FDA approved marijuana products.
A 2017 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reviewed the efficacy of marijuana based on five categories of evidentiary support: conclusive, substantial, moderate, limited, and insufficient. For many of the qualifying conditions that were added in Kentucky––including ALS, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and Crohn’s disease––the report found that there was “insufficient” evidence that marijuana provides therapeutic benefits for them.
The only category in the report with “conclusive” evidence was for “oral cannabinoids” as a treatment for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. Notably, oral cannabinoids are different from plant-based smokable marijuana––they are one isolated part of the plant rather than the entire plant itself. Nabilone and dronabinol are examples of oral cannabinoids that are approved by the FDA to treat chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting.
Patients in Kentucky would have had access to these FDA-approved drugs, which are extracts or synthetic variants of cannabis, prior to the creation and expansion of the state’s medical marijuana program.
Most recently, a 2025 review in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that “evidence is insufficient for the use of cannabis or cannabinoids for most medical indications.” It added that there is “currently insufficient evidence regarding the use of cannabis or cannabinoids for many other medical conditions including acute pain, Parkinson disease, glaucoma, and rheumatic diseases.”
Worse yet, given the potential harms of marijuana, ranging from cannabis use disorder to psychosis, this policy in Kentucky may further harm patients who are already struggling with pre-existing medical conditions (e.g., a patient with a disabling condition like Huntington’s disease may suffer a marijuana-induced psychotic break or become addicted to marijuana after wrongly believing that marijuana would provide relief).
Although the inclusion of more than a dozen conditions to Kentucky’s medical marijuana program may sound compassionate at first glance, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear’s decision threatens the health of the Bluegrass State because there is insufficient evidence to support the use of marijuana for these conditions.