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MedicalNLovingIt!
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url source: hMPp://www.courant.com/business/hc-medical-marijuana-regulations-20120627,0,488826.story
CT's Legal Marijuana: No Market Until 2013, Tight Restrictions Assured
By BRIAN DOWLING, [email protected] The Hartford Courant 2:10 p.m. EDT, June 27, 2012
Connecticut is in no rush to plant its first marijuana crop, let alone harvest it. So when the law goes into effect Oct. 1, patients might be licensed to smoke, but they will only be able to buy the drug illegally.
In October, eligible patients will be able to apply for a temporary certificate that legalizes their marijuana possession, said state officials who are preparing the rules. But the question of how to acquire the drug legally will only be answered in 2013, when the rules creating a marketplace are done.
How will marijuana reach patients? Who will grow it? Who will sell it? Weeks after Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed a law making Connecticut the 17th state to legalize pot for medical purposes, it's up to the state Department of Consumer Protection to write the rules.
On some details, including the conditions that qualify for the treatment, lawmakers crafted clear directions — a very strict limit of ailments, far narrower than in western states permitting medicinal marijuana.
And it's clear that just as Connecticut will have a stricter list of conditions that give patients the right to consume pot legally, the production and distribution will be very tightly regulated — unlike in California and Colorado, national experts say. For example, pot sold legally in Connecticut will have to be grown here by producers who can't sell it anyplace else.
"My guess, based on responses from people, is that Connecticut really wants to make this the tightest, most regulated state possible," said Bruce Bedrick, a marijuana consultant who rolled into Hartford last week with a machine his company sells for dispensing the drug.
Hours after he walked into local television studios and spoke with reporters, the governor's top criminal justice adviser said the machine had no place in the state's vision for marijuana dispensing. Bedrick insists his system could easily be operated by a pharmacist and fit under even the strictest rules.
That potential skirmish is just one example of the back-and-forth that will happen in the coming months, before the first dispensary welcomes its first customer. But there's general agreement about the conservative approach to legalized pot in Connecticut.
"There's a large amount of people who are thrilled to use medical marijuana instead of hardcore prescriptions that leave them acting like zombies," said Erik Williams, executive director the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in Connecticut. "My hope is that this would be done in such a way that it is the absolute model for the nation. I don't want it to be like in other states where patients have to go into a place with a flashing pot sign. The ideal is a dispensary that any grandmother would be happy walking into."
Connecticut is following the lead of other East Coast states like New Jersey and Vermont that have legalized the drug and put together tightly-regulated systems for dealing with its distribution.
"Since states don't know where the feds stand on this, the states are erring on the side of caution," said Morgan Fox, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a medical marijuana lobbying group in Washington D.C. "Just making fairly strict regulations in general seems to keep most federal interference out of the way, especially if there is clear requirement for compliance with state law."
As for price, the likely outcome is here, as in western states, is that patients will pay about the same as in the illegal market — though, of course, the product's quality and characteristics are more predictable. The drug will also be subject to the state's 6.35 percent sales tax, according to the Department of Revenue Services.
The law calls for anyone with a marijuana dispensing license to be a licensed pharmacist — but that still leaves room for the possibility of freestanding, storefront locations.
For many, the medical marijuana law is a capstone to a long battle. The first push in Connecticut began in earnest in 1997, and advocates nearly won in 2007 when then-Gov. Jodi Rell vetoed a medical marijuana bill that the legislature approved.
For now, the state Department of Consumer Protection is researching the Connecticut market and looking at ideas. "We're going to streamline the process, but there's a lot to be done and it's a complicated task," said Commissioner William Rubenstein.
Dispensary applications, which will be submitted by pharmacists, will require a significant fee, not yet set. Cultivator applications will require a $25,000 fee and a $2 million escrow account — and Connecticut will sanction between three and ten of them.
The number of licensed dispensaries, and the way those dispensaries operate, will be determined based on the size of the market — now being studied, Rubenstein said. Revenue projections in the bill forecast 700 patients to participate in 2013 and 1,400 in the 2014, based on numbers from Vermont and Rhode Island.
Other groups said that forecast underestimates the amount of patients who would be interested in the treatment.
Bedrick, the marijuana market consultant, estimates that Connecticut would have about 8,000 eligible participants who want the product. Williams, from Connecticut's NORML chapter, warns that lower estimates from Vermont and Rhode Island are not good indicators because both states have a significant number of patients still buying marijuana on the black market.
Patients will seek marijuana elsewhere if regulators take too long to set a framework for the market, said Gabriel Sayegh, the New York state director for the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit group that advocates more lenient drug laws.
"The situation you don't want to happen is what happened in Delaware and other states that have passed medical marijuana laws but where no patients in those states can obtain the drug through legal mechanisms," he said. "We know from other places if there's a system that doesn't work, patients are going to need to find their marijuana elsewhere."
For example, Sayegh said, a New Jersey man with multiple sclerosis began to grow marijuana in his home, because that state's distribution system had not been set up. He was arrested and is being prosecuted.
"The state is going to spend tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute this guy with a severe medical condition who was growing pot in his backyard because the state couldn't get its system up and running," Sayegh said.
Daniel Rees, a professor of economics at the University of Colorado-Denver, said Connecticut's tight regulations will significantly curtail the number of patients who opt for the treatment — leaving only those who are "genuinely sick" and most in need to use it.
"For them they are going to have to get past clearly a bunch of regulatory hurdles," Rees said, "but if you're sick enough you're going to do that."
CT's Legal Marijuana: No Market Until 2013, Tight Restrictions Assured
By BRIAN DOWLING, [email protected] The Hartford Courant 2:10 p.m. EDT, June 27, 2012
Connecticut is in no rush to plant its first marijuana crop, let alone harvest it. So when the law goes into effect Oct. 1, patients might be licensed to smoke, but they will only be able to buy the drug illegally.
In October, eligible patients will be able to apply for a temporary certificate that legalizes their marijuana possession, said state officials who are preparing the rules. But the question of how to acquire the drug legally will only be answered in 2013, when the rules creating a marketplace are done.
How will marijuana reach patients? Who will grow it? Who will sell it? Weeks after Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed a law making Connecticut the 17th state to legalize pot for medical purposes, it's up to the state Department of Consumer Protection to write the rules.
On some details, including the conditions that qualify for the treatment, lawmakers crafted clear directions — a very strict limit of ailments, far narrower than in western states permitting medicinal marijuana.
And it's clear that just as Connecticut will have a stricter list of conditions that give patients the right to consume pot legally, the production and distribution will be very tightly regulated — unlike in California and Colorado, national experts say. For example, pot sold legally in Connecticut will have to be grown here by producers who can't sell it anyplace else.
"My guess, based on responses from people, is that Connecticut really wants to make this the tightest, most regulated state possible," said Bruce Bedrick, a marijuana consultant who rolled into Hartford last week with a machine his company sells for dispensing the drug.
Hours after he walked into local television studios and spoke with reporters, the governor's top criminal justice adviser said the machine had no place in the state's vision for marijuana dispensing. Bedrick insists his system could easily be operated by a pharmacist and fit under even the strictest rules.
That potential skirmish is just one example of the back-and-forth that will happen in the coming months, before the first dispensary welcomes its first customer. But there's general agreement about the conservative approach to legalized pot in Connecticut.
"There's a large amount of people who are thrilled to use medical marijuana instead of hardcore prescriptions that leave them acting like zombies," said Erik Williams, executive director the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in Connecticut. "My hope is that this would be done in such a way that it is the absolute model for the nation. I don't want it to be like in other states where patients have to go into a place with a flashing pot sign. The ideal is a dispensary that any grandmother would be happy walking into."
Connecticut is following the lead of other East Coast states like New Jersey and Vermont that have legalized the drug and put together tightly-regulated systems for dealing with its distribution.
"Since states don't know where the feds stand on this, the states are erring on the side of caution," said Morgan Fox, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a medical marijuana lobbying group in Washington D.C. "Just making fairly strict regulations in general seems to keep most federal interference out of the way, especially if there is clear requirement for compliance with state law."
As for price, the likely outcome is here, as in western states, is that patients will pay about the same as in the illegal market — though, of course, the product's quality and characteristics are more predictable. The drug will also be subject to the state's 6.35 percent sales tax, according to the Department of Revenue Services.
The law calls for anyone with a marijuana dispensing license to be a licensed pharmacist — but that still leaves room for the possibility of freestanding, storefront locations.
For many, the medical marijuana law is a capstone to a long battle. The first push in Connecticut began in earnest in 1997, and advocates nearly won in 2007 when then-Gov. Jodi Rell vetoed a medical marijuana bill that the legislature approved.
For now, the state Department of Consumer Protection is researching the Connecticut market and looking at ideas. "We're going to streamline the process, but there's a lot to be done and it's a complicated task," said Commissioner William Rubenstein.
Dispensary applications, which will be submitted by pharmacists, will require a significant fee, not yet set. Cultivator applications will require a $25,000 fee and a $2 million escrow account — and Connecticut will sanction between three and ten of them.
The number of licensed dispensaries, and the way those dispensaries operate, will be determined based on the size of the market — now being studied, Rubenstein said. Revenue projections in the bill forecast 700 patients to participate in 2013 and 1,400 in the 2014, based on numbers from Vermont and Rhode Island.
Other groups said that forecast underestimates the amount of patients who would be interested in the treatment.
Bedrick, the marijuana market consultant, estimates that Connecticut would have about 8,000 eligible participants who want the product. Williams, from Connecticut's NORML chapter, warns that lower estimates from Vermont and Rhode Island are not good indicators because both states have a significant number of patients still buying marijuana on the black market.
Patients will seek marijuana elsewhere if regulators take too long to set a framework for the market, said Gabriel Sayegh, the New York state director for the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit group that advocates more lenient drug laws.
"The situation you don't want to happen is what happened in Delaware and other states that have passed medical marijuana laws but where no patients in those states can obtain the drug through legal mechanisms," he said. "We know from other places if there's a system that doesn't work, patients are going to need to find their marijuana elsewhere."
For example, Sayegh said, a New Jersey man with multiple sclerosis began to grow marijuana in his home, because that state's distribution system had not been set up. He was arrested and is being prosecuted.
"The state is going to spend tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute this guy with a severe medical condition who was growing pot in his backyard because the state couldn't get its system up and running," Sayegh said.
Daniel Rees, a professor of economics at the University of Colorado-Denver, said Connecticut's tight regulations will significantly curtail the number of patients who opt for the treatment — leaving only those who are "genuinely sick" and most in need to use it.
"For them they are going to have to get past clearly a bunch of regulatory hurdles," Rees said, "but if you're sick enough you're going to do that."
