With recreational marijuana now legal, medical marijuana patients want to make sure they are not being forgotten.
“One thing that’s worried folks on the patient side is most of the energy in the room has been taken up on the retail side,” said Rep. Paul Tucker, a retired police chief who last year was vice chair of the Legislature’s marijuana committee. “We look to the media, and unfortunately the medical side has taken a backseat.”
Patients say they do not want to lose access to the medical marijuana program, which offers tax-free marijuana and a reserved supply.
As the Cannabis Control Commission considers changes to the state’s marijuana regulations, and lawmakers begin a new legislative session, an advocacy group for medical marijuana patients is pushing for multiple tweaks to the medical program.
Perhaps the biggest change is the group wants to end the requirement that medical marijuana dispensaries grow and manufacture their own products.
The “vertical integration” requirement has been in place since Massachusetts legalized medical marijuana in 2012, but it does not exist for the recreational market, where applicants can apply for a license to be only a retailer.
Michael Latulippe, development director of the Massachusetts Patient Advocacy Alliance, said he is hearing of businesses that received provisional medical marijuana licenses but have not yet opened and are questioning whether to renew their licenses or to move into the recreational market, where they do not have to be vertically integrated.
It can cost $5 million to $10 million to build a grow facility, Latulippe said. “There’s a huge barrier in place,” he said.
Latulippe said dropping the vertical integration requirement could open up the medical marijuana industry to craft and boutique businesses. He also wants to bring more medical marijuana businesses to minority communities and communities harmed by marijuana enforcement.
“Those communities that were harmed by the war on drugs ... need tax-free marijuana,” Latulippe said.
The Massachusetts Patient Advocacy Alliance also supports a bill that would prohibit marijuana stores from offering product discounts, just as stores are now prohibited from offering free marijuana products.
Latulippe said that is meant to deter stores that serve both recreational customers and medical patients from offering discounts to medical patients in order to move them away from the medical program into the recreational market. This lets the patients bypass a state registration system.
Jordan Tishler, president and CEO of inhaleMD, is a doctor who prescribes medical marijuana. Tishler said he would like to see the state authorize some form of prescription, where a doctor could write down exactly what a patient is being prescribed, and a dispensary would have to fill that order. Tishler said dispensaries often try to sell his patients more expensive products that are not what Tishler believes would help their condition.
“You don’t go to CVS for a blood pressure medication and get, wink wink, nudge nudge, would you like a side of Percocet with that?” Tishler said.
At a Statehouse press conference on Wednesday, supporters of the MPAA stressed that medical patients continue to have different needs than recreational consumers. Patients often need someone to explain how certain products will affect their condition.
Shanel Lindsay, the founder of a marijuana-related business and a legal adviser to MPAA, said for patients full legalization “can be a threat or can be an opportunity.”