Pubdate: Fri, 02 May 2014
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2014 The New York Times Company
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Joseph Bergermay

CONNECTICUT ALLOWS MEDICAL MARIJUANA, BUT SELLERS ENCOUNTER HURDLES

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. - This state's law approving the sale of marijuana
for medical purposes has been on the books for two years, but the drug
is still not available.

Among the challenges has been finding dispensing locations acceptable
to Connecticut towns and cities. Fairfield and West Haven let
applicants for licenses to operate dispensaries know they would not
pass zoning muster; other municipalities, including Madison, New
Canaan and Westport, have imposed moratoriums of as long as a year
while their zoning rules are reviewed; and this month the Bridgeport
zoning board turned down a licensee.

The law, signed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, a Democrat, in May 2012,
requires that a pharmacist dispense the drug, and limits the list of
qualifying ailments. Four manufacturers and six dispensaries have so
far been licensed.

Yet even with the restrictions, those who are trying to open the
facilities are running into opposition from residents who are
concerned that a dispensary nearby would reduce the stigma for
children to try marijuana, invite black markets or lower property values.

Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have passed laws
permitting medical marijuana. Only Connecticut mandates an on-site
pharmacist.

In the patchwork of marijuana laws emerging across the country,
Connecticut is somewhere in the middle: not as adventurous as Colorado
and Washington, which have decriminalized marijuana for recreational
use for people over 21, or California, where residents can buy medical
marijuana for common conditions such as sleeplessness, loss of
appetite and anxiety. (Anyone from other states can too, using a hotel
room as a residence.) There is no official count of marijuana
dispensaries in California, but Los Angeles alone is believed to have
over 500. Critics say California's porous rules, set forth in a 1996
law, have essentially legalized marijuana as a recreational drug.

Connecticut acted before neighboring New York, where Gov. Andrew M.
Cuomo, a Democrat and longtime opponent of legalizing medical
marijuana, said in January that he would approve an experimental
program allowing up to 20 hospitals to prescribe the drug.

Proponents of medical marijuana have also faced a struggle in New
Jersey. The state enacted its Compassionate Care Act in 2010, when Jon
S. Corzine, a Democrat, was governor. It offers immunity from
prosecution to people using marijuana for a range of ailments and
makes a provision for six "alternative treatment centers" to dispense
it. Three have opened. The current governor, Chris Christie, a
Republican, is opposed to the law and has limited edible marijuana to
sick children.

The first Connecticut dispensaries are not scheduled to open until
summer, but almost 2,000 patients certified by doctors as eligible to
benefit from medical marijuana have registered with the State
Department of Consumer Protection by supplying proof of identity and a
photograph, and paying a $100 fee.

Some, like Angela Fiorini, a former 911 police dispatcher who is
undergoing chemotherapy for follicular lymphoma, are smoking marijuana
they buy from street-corner dealers with immunity from prosecution
because legislators felt it was cruel to make genuinely sick people
wait for the dispensaries.

Opponents have slowed the drug's rollout. Last month, Bridgeport's
zoning board turned down a location in a former library building
chosen by a licensed dispenser, D & B Wellness. It would have been the
most convenient dispensary for Fairfield County, but neighbors
objected to the site's proximity to a low-income apartment house.

Minnie Simmons, whose accounting office is near the proposed
Bridgeport site, said she had worried that the presence of security
guards and cameras would let people know that it was a marijuana
dispensary and possibly encourage casual marijuana smokers to induce
patients to sell them the drug, creating a black market. Children, she
said, might also conclude that if some people can obtain marijuana
legally, "it's not such a bad thing."

"We're not opposed to helping the people. We don't like the location,"
she said. "Would you want that next to an apartment building with
children? And with a Walgreen's you don't know what I purchased. If I
come out of a marijuana facility, you specifically know what my
situation is."

D & B's lawyer will appeal to the city and the courts, but the company
has only until Saturday to show it has zoning approval.

William M. Rubenstein, the state's commissioner of consumer
protection, said he would "not speculate about any course of action"
after that.

"Assuming the Bridgeport facility does not get its zoning approval,
patients in Fairfield County will have to travel farther for their
medicine," he said.

Angela D'Amico, a principal in D & B, said the board's rejection
reflected a lack of understanding about marijuana's medical benefits.
Calling it "miracle medicine," she said that it helped her with her
own arthritis and insomnia when she used the drug with a medical
marijuana card she obtained legally in California, and that she wanted
others to experience such relief.

Connecticut's law restricts marijuana to residents who are over 18 and
have received a physician's certification that they have one of the
conditions that marijuana might soothe. The qualifying ailments
include cancer, glaucoma, H.I.V. or AIDS, Parkinson's, multiple
sclerosis, spinal cord nerve damage, epilepsy, Crohn's disease,
cachexia and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Mr. Rubenstein said that established pharmacies could theoretically
qualify as dispensaries, but that given the opposition in federal laws
to marijuana, they might not want to risk the federal registrations
they need for selling controlled substances.

He said he did not think a sometimes amorphous diagnosis like PTSD
might open the door to widespread use, because every patient would
need to have a doctor confirm "the benefits of using marijuana
outweigh any detriments." Stronger controlled substances are already
legally prescribed for the disorder, he noted.

The medical marijuana can be grown and produced as capsules, oils,
pastries and patches, as well as the more common leaves and stems.
Some forms have been shorn of the chemical - tetrahydrocannabinol, or
THC - that creates the marijuana high. No more than 2.5 ounces can be
dispensed within 30 days.

The six dispensary licensees, chosen from among 27 applicants who paid
$5,000 apiece, are dispersed around the state and are, in addition to
Bridgeport, in Branford, Bristol, Hartford, South Windsor and
Uncasville. Mr. Rubenstein said the selections were based on business
experience, financial wherewithal and operational plans. All except
the Bridgeport site have received zoning approvals.

Patients with state marijuana cards can buy it on the street without
fear of prosecution.

Ms. Fiorini, 51, who is from Monroe, Conn., said that for eight months
she had been buying the drug from dealers in Bridgeport for roughly
$120 an ounce that she smoked or baked in brownies. Until she began
using it, she said, prescribed pills had not alleviated the nausea she
experiences from chemotherapy.

"Within 10 minutes of smoking marijuana, every single symptom of chemo
was completely gone," she said. "I went from vomiting to eating a full
meal."

Ms. Fiorini is ready to buy marijuana at a dispensary because it will
be safer than buying from drug dealers. She has spoken at public
meetings on behalf of Ms. D'Amico's application.

Ms. D'Amico, 56, a Brooklyn-raised woman who was a publisher of art
prints for 28 years, began investigating marijuana because she had
heard that it could slow the progress of Alzheimer's, which had
affected seven aunts and an uncle. Her business partner, Karen Barski,
42, a registered nurse, said she learned how marijuana calmed the
tremors of Parkinson's and reduced migraine pain.

Nick Tamborrino, 37, a pharmacist for Yale New Haven Health System,
applied to open a dispensary - Bluepoint Apothecary and Wellness - in
Branford. Dispensing marijuana, he said, should be no different from
dispensing other controlled substances that he furnishes as a
pharmacist. He was able to win approval from the Branford zoning board
for a rented storefront in an industrial area.

"I didn't want it on Main Street in the public eye," Mr. Tamborrino
said. "I wanted it at a discreet location."
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MAP posted-by: Matt