US Lawmaker Who Lost Limbs in War Convinces House to Allow Veteran Access to Cannabis

Before being elected to Congress, U.S. House Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., was unconscious for more than a week in 2010, when he woke up missing two legs and a finger at Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

The U.S. Army veteran was deployed to Afghanistan, where a roadside improvised explosive device (IED) in Kandahar resulted in catastrophic injuries during his work as a bomb disposal expert under the Joint Special Operations Command.

Mast recounted his experience as a double-leg amputee while introducing an amendment June 25 on the U.S. House floor.

“What I woke up to was being on a laundry list of medications,” he said. “I had an epidural. I had oral morphines and oxys. I had antidepressants, anti-inflammatories, heavy sleep sedatives. I had a Dilaudid drip and a number of other things that I can’t even remember to this point—all at once. I had not been on any of these things before in my life.”

Mast provided his testimony as a support mechanism to allow military veterans access to medical cannabis. He and Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, who co-chair the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, were successful on June 25 in attaching an amendment via a voice vote to the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies (MilCon-VA) Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2026.

The amendment would authorize the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to provide recommendations to veterans to participate in state-licensed medical cannabis programs.

“My father was wounded, left for dead in World War II, and he came home,” Joyce said on the House floor. “I know what it takes for these people and the hurt that they’ve gone through on behalf of their country, and they deserve every option available to bring them back to what they were before they left on our behalf.”

The GOP-controlled House passed the underlying appropriations legislation in a 218-206 vote with two Democrats joining the majority. The bill would provide more than $152 billion in overall discretionary spending and $300 billion for mandatory programs, fully funding veterans’ medical care at $131.4 billion, according to the House Appropriations Committee.

While the bill wouldn’t fund medical cannabis care, Mast’s amendment would authorize the VA to provide recommendations to veterans to participate in state-licensed medical cannabis programs.

While 40 states have legalized medical cannabis, federal law forbids the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) from completing forms or registering veterans for participation in state-sanctioned cannabis programs—most of which require a doctor’s recommendation and include post-traumatic stress disorder as a qualifying condition.

The VHA is the largest integrated health care system in the U.S., providing services to more than 9 million veterans at roughly 1,400 facilities nationwide.

Under the status quo, veterans often have to choose between their VA doctor and access to medical cannabis, and “that’s wrong,” Mast said.

After coming home from Afghanistan, Mast said he went through a gamut of withdrawal symptoms while coming off narcotics, from extreme irritability to extreme bowel movements and insomnia.

“The state that these narcotics—in many cases—leave our veterans [in] are at the most extreme end of it: states of suicide,” he said. “At other ends of it, just extreme states of dissatisfaction and lacking purpose in life. And, in some cases, it does leave them in a better condition. But the point I’m making with this true story is that veterans need to have options outside of these narcotics.”

While Mast introduced the Veterans Equal Access Act on Feb. 14, that standalone legislation has yet to receive a subcommittee hearing. By successfully attaching the nuts and bolts of the two-page legislation as an amendment to the MilCon-VA bill, Mast has bypassed the committee process and fast-tracked the underlying intent.

Specifically, the amendment states that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the VA may be used to enforce Veterans Health Directive 1315 as it relates to:

1. The policy stating that “VHA providers are prohibited from completing forms or registering veterans for participation in a state-approved marijuana program”;
2. The directive for the “Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Operations and Management” to ensure that “medical facility directors are aware that it is VHA policy for providers to assess veteran use of marijuana but providers are prohibited from recommending, making referrals to or completing paperwork for veteran participation in state marijuana programs”; and
3. The directive for the “VA Medical Facility Director” to ensure that “VA facility staff are aware of the following” … “[t]he prohibition recommending, making referrals to or completing forms and registering veterans for participation in state-approved marijuana programs.”

“[Veterans] need to have the ability when they’re being seen by their primary care physician inside of the VA to have discussions about whether cannabis is or is not right for them,” Mast said. “They need to be able to talk to their medical provider about what they fill out on the paperwork, what is the right dosage amount, how that’s going to interact with any other medications that they might be on, how it might affect their blood pressure or other things going on with them personally.

“And if we’re 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.”

Should Mast’s amendment remain in the final enactment of the MilCon-VA Appropriations Act, it could have broader implications for federal reform.

Federally funded VA doctors providing recommendations or prescriptions for medical cannabis would add to cannabis rescheduling advocates’ argument that the plant has “currently accepted medical use” in the U.S. and, therefore, cannot be classified as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act.

But that wasn’t on Mast’s mind during this Wednesday’s floor session.

“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’ve been on, I’ve 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,” he said.