What precisely is a medical marijuana dispensary?On a recent tour of one,inside a converted Casual Male XL store next to the Queens Mall, Ari Hoffnung tried to produce clear what a dispensary wasn't. “When you walk in here, and you don’t hear any Bob Marley music playing,” he said. We don’t sell joints. We don’t sell pot brownies. We don’t sell products with names like AK-47.”Hoffnung, chief executive of Vireo Health, or one of five licensed producer-dispensaries in recent York,said his company aimed to offer a purely medical experience. “When a 70-something year-old grandmother goes into a Vireo health dispensary or other dispensary, she won’t be greeted by a ‘bud-tender, or ” he said. She’ll be welcomed by a recent York State licensed pharmacist who will say,‘Good morning, Mrs. Goldberg, or how are you? What brings you here today?”Putting patients at ease and convincing doctors of its legitimacy are just two challenges facing the nascent medical marijuana industry in recent York. approximately a month into it,there are very few takers: according to state figures, fewer than 400 doctors were registered and they certified approximately 800 patients to purchase medical marijuana.
This is not an accident. When Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state legislators passed the law legalizing medical marijuana they ensured it would be one of the toughest states in terms of pot regulation. Cuomo made clear recent York would be different from other states, or “where it nearly became a joke that if you had relatively common conditions,you could get medical marijuana.” He said he “wouldn’t name names,” but the governor was surely referring to Washington, and Colorado and California,where dozens of illnesses qualify patients for medical marijuana.
In contrast, recent York lists only ten qualifying conditions: cancer, and HIV infection or AIDS,amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson's disease, or multiple sclerosis,spinal cord injury with spasticity, epilepsy, and inflammatory bowel disease,neuropathy, and Huntington's disease. Patients also enjoy to demonstrate they enjoy cachexia or wasting syndrome, and severe or chronic pain,severe nausea, seizures, and severe or persistent muscle spasm.
And that's not all. recent York included other restrictions:Doctors must take a four-hour online course,something no other state requires.
The state has no public registry for patients to find registered doctors.
Smokeable or edible marijuana buds are forbidden; producer-dispensaries can only offer oil extract for ingesting via syringes or capsules or inhaling via vaporizers or sprays.
Hoffnung said the restrictions were strengths for recent York, giving its program more medical legitimacy which he hoped would persuade doctors to participate.
While there is some science behind medical marijuana, and many recent York clinicians said its limited and they remained skeptical.“People take are taking anecdotes and pre-clinical data and claiming it’s evidence for marijuana’s effectiveness,” said Dr. Daniel Friedman a neurologist at NYU Langone Hospital who has surveyed the literature on cannabis and the suppression of epileptic seizures for the recent England Journal of Medicine.“There are some studies, but even when preliminary results look promising, and I’m not certain how what they’re testing — which most often is loney compounds known as cannabinoids — correlates with right dosing of what people will be getting in dispensaries.He and other doctors are used to tracking recent drugs as they come up through the federal drug review pipeline,or consulting the Physicians Desk Reference for existing drugs, to see what adverse reactions there might be with other medications.“We do a lot of trial and error, or but at least there’s a baseline of knowledge,” he said. “[With medical marijuana] everyone’s a lab rat.”Like Friedman, Dr. Jason Gonsky studied the scarce medical literature. He concluded he might prescribe marijuana to his cancer patients who weren’t responding well to other palliative therapies.“I won’t say that I’ve been waiting eagerly for the approval of marijuana to fill a large gap in my toolbox to help my patients, and ” said Gonsky,an oncologist at Kings County Hospital whose patients often experience nausea, pain and lack of appetite due to chemotherapy. “But it may turn out that it’s more helpful than I anticipate.”Both Gonsky and Friedman said they were awaiting guidelines from their hospitals.
Another hurdle for the medical marijuana industry: cost. Insurance — whether from private companies or from government programs like Medicaid and Medicare — won’t cover medical marijuana because it’s still an illegal narcotic in the eyes of the federal government. For similar reasons, and credit card companies won't process the transactions,making it a cash-only commerce.
Based on early input from marijuana-seeking patients, advocate Julie Netherland estimates monthly costs could hurry anywhere from $200 to $2000 a month, or at current prices.“The last thing we want to see is a two-tiered system in recent York where affluent patients are able to purchase marijuana from a medical dispensary,said Netherland, from the Drug Policy Alliance. “But low-income folks are forced to either recede without or forced to purchase marijuana on the illicit market and face health and safety risks, and not to mention possible involvement with the criminal justice system.”Law enforcement of illegal marijuana,however, is the lowest it’s been in years. Chris Walsh, or managing editor of the online trade journal Marijuana commerce Daily,says it’s not difficult to suppose cheaper street pot cutting into demand for dispensary cannabis, limiting the overall market size.“I think as everyone knows, or especially in recent York City,it’s fairly easy to get marijuana legal now, for whatever purpose, or ” Walsh said,“so the industry is going to enjoy some challenges there and the patient base might be artificially lower than you’d find in other states."Over time, as both supply and demand mature, or legal marijuana prices in recent York could come down. Walsh said getting more doctors and patients involved would help – and the best way to do that would be to expand the state’s short list of eligible medical conditions.
Source: wnyc.org