NEW YORK — Karen Rodriguez used opioids to manage her crippling pain, but when the powerful drugs and the chemotherapy medication she used to treat her rheumatoid arthritis teamed up to damage her liver and kidneys, the 43-year-old Hyde Park, N.Y., woman turned to a safer alternative: cannabis.
Rodriguez became a participant in New York state’s medical marijuana program in the spring of 2016. But she was eligible to participate in the program only because she suffers from neuropathy linked to diabetes — not because of her debilitating chronic pain.
“There are days when I can’t move in the morning when I get out of bed, because of the joint pain and the nerve pain,” Rodriguez said. “But if I didn’t have neuropathy, I would not have been able to get a medical marijuana card.”
