Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jun 2015
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2015 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: http://services.bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340
Website: http://bostonglobe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Steven A. Rosenberg

FINALLY, SOME CAN BUY MEDICAL MARIJUANA IN MASSACHUSETTS

Almost 32 months after Massachusetts voters approved a new law to 
legalize medical marijuana, pot was sold legally last week to 
patients in Salem from the first dispensary to open in the state.

Supporters of the law cheered the opening, saying it was a long time coming.

In a cinderblock warehouse tucked behind Route 24 in Brockton, David 
Noble also had good reason to smile. The president of In Good Health, 
one of 12 nonprofits in the state deemed qualified by the Department 
of Public Health to cultivate medical marijuana, believes the uneasy 
wait for patients to buy legal, state-certified pot is finally over.

In Good Health is one of four groups already approved by the state to 
grow cannabis, along with Alternative Therapies Group in Amesbury and 
Salem, Central Ave. Compassionate Care in Ayer, and New England 
Treatment Access, which has its cultivation site in Franklin and 
dispensaries planned for Brookline and Northampton. Noble says his 
company will be ready for business in weeks, following on the heels 
of Alternative Therapies Group in Salem.

On a recent day, Noble walked from room to room in his sealed bunker, 
inspecting thousands of plants that will be harvested, cured, and 
dried in late July. While In Good Health's provisional license allows 
it to grow marijuana, it can sell it to approved patients only after 
the facility is reinspected and the crop and products are tested by 
an independent lab for quality and contaminants. Noble believes his 
product will pass muster with the state health agency, and he expects 
that by late summer buds from his plants, as well as marijuana oils 
that will be baked into cookies, brownies, chocolates, and other 
edibles, will be sold from a shop in the front of the building.

The state Department of Public Health has granted provisional 
certificates to 12 nonprofit groups deeming them qualified to 
cultivate the drug.

"This will be set up like a bank teller line where patients will come 
in, be queued into the system, and then one by one they'll go up to 
the next available register like you would in a department store," he 
said, standing in the now-vacant section of his warehouse that will 
serve as the dispensary.

He said he expects to have as many as 30 strains of marijuana 
available for sale at $13-$18 per gram and $290 to $385 per ounce. 
Under state law, medical marijuana patients can receive a 60-day 
supply of up to 10 ounces from a dispensary with each prescription, 
unless specified otherwise by their doctor.

'It was going to be a long road . . . we were prepared for that.' 
David Noble, In Good Health president, on the wait for its Brockton 
dispensary to open

For the 9,150 Massachusetts residents with state medical marijuana 
cards, the opening of Alternative Therapies Group's dispensary is 
very good news, coming after a difficult approval process that has 
seen the state stumble repeatedly since the November 2012 vote.

Newton resident Peter Hayashi said he figured more than two years ago 
that he'd be able to buy the drug legally in Massachusetts by now. 
The 59-year-old once worked as a neuroclinical psychologist but had 
to retire because of a shoulder injury. For much of the last year, 
he's had to get the drug by traveling to a dispensary in Portland, 
Maine, which honors medical marijuana cards issued by the Commonwealth.

"It has been a real morale booster for me," Hayashi said of the Baker 
administration's decision to allow the Salem dispensary to open last 
week. "Ironically, I heard the news on the radio as I was coming back 
from Portland from what I hope is my final out-of-state trip to 
purchase medical marijuana."

Although welcomed by the medical marijuana community, the Salem 
opening represented yet another complication for the state and the 
fledgling nonprofits navigating the regulation process. To allow the 
opening, Governor Charlie Baker granted a temporary waiver for 
Alternative Therapies to bypass some of the tests required by the 
Department of Public Health, following revelations that an 
independent lab was unable to check for seven of the 18 pesticides on its list.

The waiver came nearly a year after the state revoked provisional 
licenses for nine candidates after discovering some proposed 
dispensaries planned to divert revenues from their nonprofit 
structures to for-profit organizations, and that at least one had 
misrepresented local support for its application; in another case, an 
application had failed to include an investor's drug conviction.

"This waiver is a significant step forward for qualified patients who 
have been waiting far too long to access the medical marijuana that 
their doctors have recommended," said Kevin Gilnack, executive 
director of the Commonwealth Dispensary Association, a trade group.

While Salem is serving patients - by appointment only - and 
dispensaries in Brockton and Ayer are expected to gain final approval 
to operate later this summer, it's unknown when the next facility will open.

New England Treatment Access began growing marijuana this spring in 
Franklin for its Northampton facility, but still needs to complete 
local permitting in Brookline. Dot Joyce, a company spokeswoman, said 
the group plans to open its Brookline dispensary at 160 Washington 
St. sometime in the fall.

But the status of several other planned dispensaries is less clear. 
Most of the businesses do not answer phone calls, and some have 
bare-bones websites.

Healthy Pharms in Haverhill doesn't have a location to either grow or 
sell. "I don't know what their status is," Haverhill Mayor Jim 
Fiorentini said in a recent interview.

But the company could be close to finding a home: Last week, 
Georgetown's Board of Selectmen voted not to oppose allowing Healthy 
Pharms to operate a dispensary and cultivation center on East Main 
Street. The company still needs approval from the state and a special 
permit from the town to open there.

Other companies, such as Garden Remedies, which plans a dispensary on 
Washington Street in Newton, have only recently secured cultivation 
sites. Garden Remedies has obtained a grow site in Fitchburg, said 
Dr. Dori Zaleznik, Newton's chief administrative officer. Garden 
Remedies' founding director, Dr. Karen Munkacy, did not respond to 
phone or e-mail requests for an interview.

After 63 percent of the state's voters supported making medical 
cannabis legal in 2012, it took nearly 15 months before the state 
granted preliminary approval to 20 dispensary applicants. Then, nine 
of the provisional licenses were revoked by the state last June, but 
since November health officials have approved four other applications 
for facilities in Boston, Greenfield, Holbrook and Taunton, and 
Fairhaven. The Boston and Greenfield certificates were awarded to 
Patriot Care Corp., which already holds a provisional license to open 
a dispensary in Lowell.

In an interview, Department of Public Health spokesman Scott Zoback 
said provisional license holders create their own timeline to apply 
for state approval to cultivate and sell marijuana. He deflected any 
criticism of the state slowing down the approval process, saying it 
was the responsibility of the businesses to build their facilities 
and to obtain local approval from host communities.

Inside In Good Health's Brockton facility - where the glass cases 
that are expected to hold marijuana buds, pot brownies, and hash oils 
now sit empty - David Noble was not complaining.

"We've just been open-minded and worked with everybody to understand 
that it was going to be a long road," he said. "But we were prepared for that."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom