Pot medic sues board to get license back

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Zia Health & Wellness isn't your typical medical office.

A billboard out front says "Marijuana Cards". The practice's purpose is to help patients get certified for New Mexico's Medical Cannabis Program.

Physician's assistant Richard Rubin's job there was to help evaluate patients and get them the necessary paperwork to apply for a Medical Cannabis Card.

He says he helped at least 515 people get certified as in need of medical marijuana, around 7 percent of the 8,206 currently signed up statewide.

That is until last year when he was helping a patient with post-traumatic stress disorder renew his card with the state and needed a signature from the man's psychiatrist.

Instead of signing, the psychiatrist, also a member of the state's Medical Board, filed a complaint saying Rubin was helping patients get certified who weren't his and with whom he didn't have an ongoing relationship.

The rest of the Medical Board agreed.  The board chose to take action without a formal hearing and unanimously suspended Rubin's license at a May meeting calling him an immediate danger to the public.

A notice sent to Rubin accused him of deceiving patients, deceiving the state and "prescribing, dispensing or administering drugs... to a patient when there is no established physician-patient relationship."

The state also claimed Rubin did not have the proper supervision a physician's assistant needs to prescribe medication.

Rubin tells News 13 he was shocked.  Apparently so was Dr. Steven Jenison, chair of the medical advisory board for the Cannabis Program.

He wrote two letters to the Medical Board earlier this month telling members they were completely misapplying state law and had several clear errors in their decision.

Jenison wrote that among those errors was the fact that practitioners who certify patients for the Cannabis Program aren't "prescribing" medical marijuana and that the law doesn't require a "physician-patient relationship" from the practitioner doing the certification.

And now Rubin's fighting back, too. His attorney filed a lawsuit against the Medical Board in federal court Wednesday in an attempt to get Rubin's license reinstated and to get the state to pay damages.

The New Mexico Medical Board did not return calls for comment on this story.