Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MAST. Mr. Chair, I am here to speak on my amendment No. 21. This is something that we have dealt with here in Congress before. Specifically it relates to veterans' access to cannabis.

The story that I will tell in advance of this is simply this: I woke up in Walter Reed Army Medical Center not too far from here a number of years ago, and when I woke up, I was missing two legs and a finger. I had been out of consciousness for a week plus.

What I woke up to was being on a laundry list of medications. I had an epidural. I had oral morphines and oxies. I had antidepressants, anti-inflammatories, and heavy sleep sedatives. I had a Dilaudid drip and a number of other things that I can't even remember at this point all at once. I had never been on any of these things before in my life.

Immediately, as soon as I woke up, I started to wean myself off of these drugs because I was saying to myself: I might be very uncomfortable, but I don't want to be dependent on sleep sedatives. I might be in a lot of pain, but let's start by getting off of this painkiller and this painkiller and this painkiller. I am not depressed, so take this antidepressant away.

These narcotics were beyond painful to come off of. I was down to the lowest amount after about 6 months of the last narcotic, which was an oral morphine. Going from the lowest amount twice a day 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. to nothing, I spent the next several months miserable, suffering the gamut of withdraw symptoms: irritability to say the least, food going through me, up all night. You name it. That was just after 6 months.

The state that these narcotics, in many cases, leave our veterans in are, at the most extreme end of it, states of suicide and, at the other end of it, just extreme states of dissatisfaction and lacking purpose in life. In some cases it does leave them in a better condition.

The point I am making with this true story is that veterans need to have options outside of these narcotics.

In many States, there are legal cannabis medical programs. They need to have the ability when they are being seen by their primary care physician inside of the VA to have discussions about whether cannabis is or is not right for them. They have access to it in their State. They need to be able to talk to their medical provider about what they fill out on the paperwork, what the right dosage amount is, how that is going to interact with any other medications that they might be on, and how it might affect their blood pressure or other things going on with them personally.

If we are not giving that option to have that conversation at the most serious level without worrying about some kind of reprisal for the doctor or otherwise, then we are doing our veterans a disservice in, certainly, at minimum, all of these States where there are legal cannabis programs.

I am not a doctor. I would not purport to know when this is a good treatment for somebody, when it is not, or the amounts that they should take. Yet, I know that as long as it is available in these various States, their doctors need to have the opportunity to discuss that treatment with them. The fact of the matter is, while I have heard of many of my brothers- and sisters-in-arms being in a state of suicide because of the narcotics they have been on, I have yet to hear about any of them attributing a state of suicide to the cannabis that they have had as a part of their life.

Mr. Chairman, I ask for support on amendment No. 21.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source