ORANGE PARK – Michael Mitchem swallows 35 pills a day.

His 15 different medications help remedy a lengthy list of conditions including chronic low back pain, cirrhosis of the liver, bipolar disorder and depression.

The pills come with their own side effects, so it’s much like switching out one set of ailments for another.

At 63 years old, he would like to change that by taking medical marijuana,

“It’s a burden,” Mitchem said. “Seems like all I do all day is take pills. I schedule my day around the pills. It would be a relief to have one medication that has none of the side effects that I have.”

Not just for him, he said, but his wife, who currently has an inoperable tumor on her carotid artery. A number of small studies on patients living with cancer found a reduction in nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy, but more recent studies have found marijuana can reduce the size or even kill cancer cells inside of a petri dish.

Recently, Mitchem has developed small, persistent tremors. While doctors have not found the reason for his onset tremors, they have ruled our Parkinson’s disease. Mitchem said it’s possible the interaction of his list of medications could be, at least in part, to blame for this new symptom.

Overall, however, he said he would like to stop taking opioids as a treatment for his lower back pain. While working on a tugboat in his youth, a worker had him hold an engine from below floor level while the worker tinkered with the engine. This caused an injury that inevitably left his lower back damaged.

The elderly are not immune to America’s opioid crisis.

After a decade of opioid use, Mitchem said he doesn’t feel much of any effect from them anymore. And while he said he doesn’t have an addictive personality, many seniors report forming a strong dependency on opioids as they progress through their treatment.

A December study by a Washington Post Kaiser Family Foundation Poll found nearly all long-term users of prescription painkillers say they started the painkillers with a prescription from a doctor. And while nearly all studied long-term users reported they used the drug to relieve pain, 34 percent reported being physically dependent on the drug.

It’s common for chronic pain to develop later in life, and often through work related injuries. This pain only becomes more acute as an individual becomes older, so often doctors turn to opioids as a permanent bandage when corrective surgery is not an option or necessary.

However, seniors who do seek help find that Medicare does not cover most types of addiction treatment, so the ordeal can be costly.

Mitchem uses CBD oil made from hemp to replicate some of medical marijuana’s healing effects. But it’s expensive, a concentrated form of the plant extract runs around $160.

For a time, there was a CBD dispensary operating in the Town of Orange Park, but police raided the installation in late November after their product was found to contain trace amounts of THC, the euphoria-inducing compound found in marijuana.

“I don’t feel like we should regulate cannabis at all,” Mitchem said. “We shouldn’t have cannabis as the last possible option.”

Mitchem said he is frustrated, as undoubtedly others are, that legislative implementation for the medicine is still working its way through the lawmaking process. He’s also worried whichever bill passes will not provide for the availability voters affirmed by 71 percent.

Voters approved Amendment 2 to approve expanded use of medical marijuana in patients with “debilitating illnesses” in November.

But since then, legislators have drawn critics for proposing restrictive bills that operate within the legal structure of the 2014 ‘Charlotte’s Web’ bill that legalized the use of medical marijuana for terminal patients.

Restrictions such as a ban on smoking marijuana and a ban on edibles exist in HB 1397, proposed by House Majority Leader Ray Rodrigues(R-Estero), while other proposed bills mire the industry in regulatory red tape.

“There are still some inherent obstacles for patients to access this,” said Fleming Island physician Calvin Siegers, who is now one of five Clay County physicians who are registered to recommend medical marijuana. “Even if I were to be in a position to certify that someone has a need, they would still have some difficulty in actually obtaining medical marijuana, and those are rather slow moving things to change.

“My pessimism hasn’t changed, but it also hasn’t increased. I think this is a very slow moving change, and I think there are players in the system that would just as soon have it remain a slow-moving change.”

Mitchem will spend his time sorting through his medications each morning until a bill eventually passes the governor’s desk. He would prefer that be sooner rather than later, however.