Pubdate: Thu, 27 Aug 2015
Source: Tucson Weekly (AZ)
Copyright: 2015 Tucson Weekly
Contact:  http://www.tucsonweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/462
Author: Katie Campbell, Lauren Del Valle, Rilwan Balogun and Anne M. Shearer

NEWS21: AMERICA'S WEED RUSH

With a federal ban on marijuana, states are left to craft their own 
medical pot rules-whether they work or not

After waiting in line for hours at a booth during a medical marijuana 
convention in San Francisco, Jeff Harrington needed only a two-minute 
consultation and a written recommendation to become a medical 
marijuana patient in California. He now can legally purchase and 
possess marijuana from any one of thousands of marijuana businesses 
in the state.

Across the country in Connecticut, an established physician-patient 
relationship is required before patients are deemed qualified for 
medical marijuana, and only licensed pharmacists can own and operate 
dispensaries.

Between these two extremes, a News21 investigation has found there 
are as many ways to deal with medical marijuana as there are states 
that have legalized it.

As the federal government continues its prohibition of marijuana, the 
District of Columbia and the 23 states that have legalized marijuana 
for medical use have been left to write the rules and regulations on their own.

The experimentation has produced wide variances and contradictions in 
their approaches to everything from possession limits and lab testing 
to how people qualify as medical marijuana patients.

For example, in Vermont, a medical marijuana patient is allowed only 
two mature plants and 2 ounces of marijuana. By contrast, in 
Washington state, a patient can have 15 plants and 24 ounces of 
prepared marijuana.

In some states, like New Mexico, there is no fee for a medical 
marijuana card, while others, such as Minnesota, charge up to $200. 
Some states do not tax medicinal marijuana, but others charge a sales 
tax or a specific tax on marijuana products of as much as 37 percent 
in Washington state.

Because marijuana remains a federally controlled, Schedule 1 drug, 
federal agencies do not offer states any guidance or medical protocol 
for state medical marijuana programs.

"Based on the research to date, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration 
has not recognized or approved the marijuana plant as medicine," 
Mario Moreno Zepeda, spokesperson for the White House Office of 
National Drug Control Policy, said. "However, research on marijuana 
extracts, called cannabinoids, has led to FDA-approved medications."

FDA approval of marijuana would require "carefully conducted studies 
(clinical trials) in hundreds to thousands of human subjects to 
determine the benefits and risks of a possible medication," according 
to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The News21 analysis of medical marijuana programs across the country 
also showed states diverge on what health conditions qualify a 
patient for medical marijuana, and little or no research has been 
done to determine whether marijuana or its derivatives effectively 
treat those conditions. AIDS, cancer and chronic pain qualify as 
conditions for medical marijuana treatment in more than 20 states. 
But traumatic brain injury qualifies only in New Hampshire and 
Tourette syndrome qualifies only in New Mexico.

To be considered qualified for medical marijuana, patients in all 24 
programs must be diagnosed with an approved condition by a physician. 
Yet the standards for physician evaluations vary. The California 
doctor that Harrington saw in San Francisco legally certified him for 
medical marijuana in a consultation that took less than five minutes. 
He was one of hundreds seen on the same day.

A single physician in New Jersey has approved over 1,000 of that 
state's more than 4,000 medical marijuana patients. In Washington 
state, at least 12 doctors have faced penalties for operating 
so-called marijuana mills at which they recommended medical marijuana 
for large numbers of people, according to Donn Moyer, a spokesman 
from Washington state's Department of Social and Heath Services.

Dr. Anthony Anzalone, the New Jersey doctor who has paved the way for 
at least 1,000 of the state's medical marijuana patients, is a former 
gynecologist who left his former practice to evaluate patients for 
medical marijuana. He said that he wants to see patients have access 
to medical marijuana, even if he has to dig for a reason.

"Patients say, 'Oh, I have post-traumatic stress.' I say, 
'Unfortunately, the state will not allow it at this point in time. 
However, tell me more. Do you have any kind of GI (gastrointestinal) 
problem - irritable bowel (syndrome)?'" Anzalone said. "They don't 
think about that."

He said the idea is to make people feel better-not high.

"If you are not getting approved for medical marijuana in New Jersey, 
you are going to the wrong doctor," said Anzalone's patient 
counselor, Kevin Long.

Connecticut is the only state that treats medical marijuana like any 
other pharmaceutical drug.

Jonathan Harris, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of 
Consumer Protection, said that state is "the only state in the nation 
that has a true medical marijuana program."

Once patients are approved by a doctor and registered through Harris' 
department, they must obtain their medical marijuana from one of six 
licensed dispensaries, which are owned and operated by licensed pharmacists.

When Laurie Zrenda, a pharmacist of 27 years, opened her dispensary 
in Uncasville, Connecticut, patients handed her hundreds of dollars 
in cash to pay for their medical marijuana.

"And then, I realized they were paying their drug dealers all of this 
money before," she said. "They were used to it."

Her dispensary, Thames Valley Alternative Relief, serves 515 
patients. "I didn't realize how widely used it was for so many other 
conditions," she said. "It's pretty amazing that one plant can do all 
these things. ... I know the evidence is anecdotal, but it's there. 
It's hard to deny it."

Eight states-Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, 
New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York-and Washington, D.C. require 
patients to use dispensaries rather than allowing home cultivation.

Of those, seven states require their dispensaries to submit product 
for testing.

New Jersey's Public Health and Environmental Laboratories, however, 
is the only state-run lab in the United States to test product from 
the medical marijuana dispensaries, said Megan Latshaw, the director 
of environmental health programs for the Association of Public Health 
Laboratories.

According to Dave Hodges, a dispensary inspection monitor in New 
Jersey, these tests are only conducted when requested by the dispensary.

This is from a continuing series from America's Weed Rush, an 
investigation of marijuana legalization in America, a 2015 project of 
the Carnegie-Knight News21 program produced by the nation's top 
journalism students and graduates.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom