When Lehigh Valley doctor Charles Harris started approving patients for medical marijuana a few years ago, most of them were dealing with chronic pain. Using cannabis helped them tremendously, he said. Patients told him their pain wasn’t keeping them awake at night anymore — they could finally get a good night’s sleep, or at least a few hours of rest in a row.

Then, in the summer of 2019, the Pennsylvania Department of Health changed its rules to allow patients to use medical marijuana for another condition: anxiety disorders.

The move, Harris later joked with friends, caused his business phone to melt.

“It was a veritable tsunami of patients,” Harris told Spotlight PA.

That wave spread to doctors across Pennsylvania, one of only a few states to specifically endorse cannabis as a treatment for anxiety. Anxiety disorders are now the leading reason Pennsylvanians get a medical marijuana card, a first-of-its-kind analysis of more than 1.1 million certification records obtained by Spotlight PA reveals.

The records — which the Department of Health attempted to keep secret by suing Spotlight PA in state court — offer the first comprehensive look at how a decision by former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration transformed Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana program, and, in the eyes of some, made it possible for basically anyone to get a medical marijuana card.