Pubdate: Wed, 24 Jul 2013
Source: Telegraph, The (Nashua, NH)
Copyright: 2013 Telegraph Publishing Company
Contact:  http://www.nashuatelegraph.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/885
Author: David Brooks

Cannabis Care

NEW HAMPSHIRE MEDICAL MARIJUANA REGULATORS URGED TO LEARN FROM NEW 
JERSEY'S FAILURES

Editor's note: New Hampshire is the 19th state to allow some form of 
medical marijuana. The Telegraph's six-day series, Cannabis Care, 
examines New Hampshire's therapeutic marijuana legislation and how 
the law will work, including who can get the drug, how much it will 
cost, and what needs to happen before the first batch of marijuana is 
legally distributed in the state.

It sounds simple: Legalize therapeutic marijuana, create some 
dispensaries that grow it and sell it on doctors' orders, and you're done.

Or maybe not.

Consider New Jersey, which passed a law similar to New Hampshire's 
medical-marijuana law in 2010 but currently has zero functioning 
dispensaries, and only about 200 patients who have received cannabis 
in a state seven times the size of New Hampshire.

"Our system slid from dysfunctional to total failure," said Ken 
Wolski, who has been advocating for medical marijuana in New Jersey 
for a decade. He heads a 10-year-old nonprofit called The Coalition 
of Medical Marijuana-New Jersey.

The fact is, he said, that when it comes to implementing laws, the 
devil is in the details, and the details are in the regulations.

"I was a state employee for 25 years, and I'm well aware of the 
importance of regulations in making a workable program," Wolski said.

In January 2010, the New Jersey Legislature passed and the governor 
signed a medical marijuana law that, like New Hampshire's, 
established a few state-controlled dispensaries (six of them; New 
Hampshire will have four), established a limited number of diseases 
that qualify for cannabis treatment, limited strains of cannabis that 
can be sold and forbids growing marijuana outside dispensaries.

That left a lot of details to be filled in by regulations.

Whether deliberately (as Wolski said he suspects) or inadvertently, 
the regulations drawn up by the administration of Gov. Chris 
Christie, who was elected shortly after the medical-pot law passed 
and has never been a big fan of it, have throttled implementation.

As an example, Wolski pointed out that patients sign up for a 
statewide register in order to get pot, while physicians must sign up 
for a separate register before they can certify that somebody has a 
disease that qualifies for pot. (As in New Hampshire and other 
medical-marijuana states, doctors don't write actual prescriptions for dope.)

"It established a series of hoops that doctors have to go through to 
register, and only a couple hundred have done so out of 30,000 in the 
state," Wolski said. "That makes it very, very difficult for a 
patient to find a doctor. It's supposed to be a bona fide 
doctor-patient relationship, but they have to search for a doctor, 
and it might be an OB-GYN if they have a neurological syndrome."

Christie has supported the requirement as necessary to keep a lid on 
this new area of medical treatment, saying in one public speech: "I 
am not going to turn this into a place where people fly into Newark 
airport, drive someplace, claim to have a migraine from a quack 
doctor and get high."

Another difficulty is creating dispensaries. Only one New Jersey 
dispensary has opened so far and, after serving about 200 patients, 
it was closed as of July  either because of overwhelming demand or 
quality-control issues, depending on which reports you believe.

Another dispensary is supposed to open this fall, but the phone 
number it lists on its website has been disconnected.

A couple of issues have combined to this lack.

One is that many communities are reluctant to allow marijuana 
dispensaries out of concern that they will morph into "head shops" 
and attract undesirable crowds. This is likely to be an issue in New 
Hampshire, as well, since some towns are comparing dispensaries to 
strip clubs, which can be disallowed by a town's zoning.

Another is state regulations.

"The alternative treatment centers are regulated more strictly than 
full-service pharmacies are regulated," Wolski said.

Wolski also cited limits on the percentage of THC, the important 
active ingredient in cannabis, to 10 percent, and the fact that 
therapeutic marijuana is subject to state tax, unusual for a medicine.

"The result is an inferior medicine, of limited variety, at very high 
expense," he said, estimating cost of around $140 per quarter ounce, 
plus tax. "No wonder it's having problems."

Wolski said he wasn't optimistic that things would change anytime 
soon, noting that Christie is extremely popular and likely to be 
re-elected this year.

"I want to caution New Hampshire as it proceeds," he said. "If they 
want to make a meaningful program, consistent with the intent of 
helping people, they need to have some people who actually understand 
how marijuana works ... when drawing up regulations. Otherwise, it will fail."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom