Legislation authored by Congressman Chris Smith that will help military veterans treat their PTSD through enhanced outdoor medical therapy and recreation passed in the U.S. Senate last night, the eve of Veterans Day, and is on its way to the White House to be signed into law.
New Jersey Post Traumatic Stress Disorder patients can be treated with Medical Marijuana, after conventional treatments have failed, under a bill signed by Governor Chris Christie on Wednesday. The new law took effect upon Christie signing the bill.
The bill, which passed with veto proof majorities in the Assembly and Senate, adds PTSD to the list of debilitating medical conditions that can be legally treated with cannabis under the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act.
In a statement issued with the enactment of the bill, Christie cited the increase in PTSD among military veterans and others since the terrorist attack upon the United States on September 11, 2001. Christie said he was directing the Commissioner of the Department of Health to promulgate regulations to deter the abuse of medical marijuana that might result from the enactment of this new law.
As the former chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee and the author of more than a dozen laws to modernize, expand and improve the services provided by the Veterans Administration (VA), I see the need to review and evaluate existing programs to ensure that they align with the promise a grateful nation makes to those who wear and have worn the uniforms of the United States military. As President Lincoln so eloquently said at the end of the Civil War: “Let us strive…to care for him who shall have borne the battle…” a phrase later adopted as the motto of the VA.
That is why I co-sponsored and twice voted for the “Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans (SAV) Act.” This bipartisan legislation is named in honor of the late Iraq and Afghanistan War veteran whose story is not unfamiliar to many who have attempted to navigate the VA’s bureaucracy to receive the care they have earned. Clay Hunt was one of the many veterans who experience some form of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of their service, yet he did not receive adequate mental health care in the VA system and took his own life at the age of 28.
