Pubdate: Tue, 24 Jan 2012
Source: Sun, The (Yuma, AZ)
Copyright: 2012 The Sun
Contact: http://www.yumasun.com/sections/opinion/submit-letters/
Website: http://www.yumasun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1258
Author: Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

POT DISPENSARIES COULD BE RUNNING BY MID-JULY

PHOENIX - The state's first medical marijuana dispensaries could be
up, running and selling the drug by mid-July.

State Health Director Will Humble announced Tuesday he will not appeal
a court ruling invalidating some of the rules he had crafted limiting
who can own and operate the shops, including a requirement to be a
resident for at least three years. Those rules also gave favorable
treatment to applicants who had never declared bankruptcy.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Richard Gama said last week that
the 2010 voter-approved initiative creating a medical marijuana system
in Arizona did not allow for such restrictions.

Humble said his next step is to recraft the already enacted rules to
account for the judge's ruling. He said even using an expedited
process, his agency will now be ready to accept applications "as early
as April."

At that point, said Humble, health officials have 45 days to review
the applications to ensure that those who want to run the dispensaries
meet the legal requirements that Gama said can take effect. These
include having $150,000 in start-up capital and that the applicant
have at least a 20 percent financial interest in the dispensary "so
you don't have straw applicants."

The last step, said Humble, is a lottery in cases where more than one
applicant wants a state license to operate a dispensary in a specific
area. While the law envisions about 125 dispensaries in the state,
Humble has set it up to ensure that these are spread out and not all
concentrated in a few population centers.

"We'd probably have the lottery around June 15th, which would put
dispensaries up and running probably mid-July," he said - almost
exactly a year after when voters directed they be set up.

"Obviously, we're delighted now that the will of the voters will be
carried out," said Joe Yuhas, lobbyist for the Arizona Medical
Marijuana Association. But Yuhas said the delay has been even longer
than that.

He pointed out that voters first approved a medical marijuana law in
1996, only to have it overturned by the Legislature. Supporters came
back two years later and overrode the legislative action.

But that law never took effect because it required a doctor to
actually write a prescription for the drug. No doctor was willing to
do that after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration threatened to
revoke all prescription-writing privileges of any physicians who did
that.

The 2010 ballot measure fixed that by having doctors write a
"recommendation" that a patient with specific medical needs could
benefit from having marijuana. That recommendation entitles the
patient to get a card from the state health department entitling them
to obtain up to 2-1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks.

About 18,000 of these cards already have been issued.

But Humble, under orders from Gov. Jan Brewer, never instituted the
second half of the initiative which required him to license up to 125
state-regulated dispensaries.

That came after Dennis Burke, who was the U.S. attorney for Arizona at
the time, refused to provide Humble with written assurances that state
workers who process dispensary applications would not be charged with
violating federal laws making it a crime to facilitate the sale of
marijuana.

A federal judge refused to intercede in that battle. And Gama ruled
last week that Brewer's delay was illegal.

In that same ruling, the judge disallowed some of the restrictions
Humble had placed on applicants. But that left the door open for
Humble to appeal, something he decided Tuesday not to do, ending the
last bit of litigation. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.