Pa. Department of Health sues to keep medical marijuana program data secret

The Pennsylvania Department of Health is again suing Spotlight PA in an attempt to keep information about how patients obtain a medical marijuana card secret from the public.

This time, the health department does not want to reveal how often individual physicians approve patients for the medical program — information that could help identify outliers who might be bending or breaking the state’s rules.

Spotlight PA sought that information under the state’s open records law, and the newsroom specifically noted that it was seeking information about doctors and not the names of patients.

In January, an independent state agency determined that records should be made public to the extent that they exist, citing a recent Commonwealth Court decision in which judges rejected the health department’s broad interpretation of the medical marijuana law’s confidentiality rules.

The state Office of Open Records gave the health department 30 days to hand over relevant records. But the health department refused and this month appealed to Commonwealth Court — an action that will likely delay access to the records for at least several months, if not permanently.

Withholding that information makes it harder to understand how the medical marijuana law is working, said Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, which Spotlight PA is a member of. [Read more at Spotlight PA]