Spotlight PA investigation reveals ‘deficiencies’ in cannabis oversight, lawmakers say

After a Spotlight PA investigation revealed that some of Pennsylvania’s top medical marijuana doctors have a history of misconduct, two state lawmakers said they plan to propose legislation to strengthen the oversight process for doctors seeking authorization to issue medical marijuana cards.

The investigation, written by investigative reporter Ed Mahon, sheds light on how Pennsylvania’s Department of Health wields its gatekeeping powers to decide which doctors can approve patients for a medical marijuana card. 

Mahon’s reporting was based in part on data he obtained through successful litigation with free legal support from Paula Knudsen Burke, the Pennsylvania Local Legal Initiative attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Using those records, Mahon reported that while most Pennsylvania medical marijuana doctors issue fewer than 100 certifications per year, select physicians issue more than 3,000 annually. Some of those top doctors have a disciplinary record, including one whose medical license was suspended in 2003 after pleading guilty to charges related to illegal drug distribution.

“There’s hundreds of thousands of patients in this medical marijuana program, and every time they go for a certification, they often need to pay their doctor a certain amount of money,” Mahon told the Reporters Committee in an interview. “The question that we’re looking at is, ‘What is the quality of these certifications? What is the quality of the care that they receive when they go through this certification process? And are these patients getting the most for their money when they go through this process?’”

In 2022, Mahon requested from Pennsylvania’s health department aggregate data showing how many medical marijuana cards were issued by individual doctors, including one who had been disciplined by the department for allegedly violating the program’s rules. But the agency refused to turn the records over under the state’s Right-to-Know law, arguing that they were protected by a confidentiality provision in Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana law. 

Mahon appealed to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, which ruled in his favor. The state Department of Health sued Mahon and Spotlight PA to keep the records secret. That’s when Mahon sought help from Burke to fight for their release. 

Last November, a Commonwealth Court judge ordered the agency to turn over the data. 

“There’s a public interest, benefit, to having this information released,” Mahon said. “And that’s just simply that you can help identify patterns in the program. You can identify doctors who may be outliers, and you can examine their practices.”

It’s not the first time Burke has helped Mahon and Spotlight PA obtain records that help Pennsylvanians better understand how the state medical marijuana program functions. 

In 2022, Burke successfully represented the nonprofit news organization and Mahon after Pennsylvania’s Department of Health sued them to shield over one million records that showed how many patients use medical marijuana for conditions like anxiety, chronic pain, and cancer. Mahon’s analysis of that data revealed that anxiety disorders were the dominant reason why patients were approved to use medical marijuana, despite a lack of scientific consensus on whether cannabis is an effective treatment for the disorder. 

Since that victory, Mahon said Pennsylvania’s Department of Health has proactively made more records public, including by annually publishing the data that he fought for access to in 2022. He said he thinks this recent court order will compel the agency to be more transparent in the future. And he credits Burke and the Reporters Committee’s Local Legal Initiative with helping make this transparency possible.

“Always, always, always, Paula is great,” Mahon said. “We owe a lot to her.”