State regulators issue guidelines for home delivery

PROVIDENCE — No day better illustrates the blurred distinction between medical and recreational marijuana use than April 20 — the international pot celebration day — when the truly afflicted and the pseudo sick flocked to Rhode Island’s three medicinal dispensaries for holiday specials.

“Happy 4/20!” Warwick’s Summit dispensary declared on its webpage. “Gift Bag Giveaway and featured treats.”

“Join us today 4/20,” the Thomas C. Slater dispensary in Providence announced online: “First 300 patients receive a free ⅛ [ounce] with purchase of any ⅛ or more.”

“Happy 4/20!!!” shouted out Portsmouth’s Greenleaf dispensary, advertising its extended hours on its webpage.

And on Saturday, the customers came. Outside Slater, they clogged traffic along Corliss Street and kept parking attendants scrambling to redirect cars farther down the road. By 8:30 a.m., the product giveaways were gone, two workers said.

Next April 20, there may be less congestion everywhere if state regulators and the dispensaries move ahead with home-delivery services.

As state lawmakers weigh Gov. Gina Raimondo’s proposal to legalize recreational pot this year, the Department of Business Regulation last week issued requirements for dispensaries wishing to deliver products to the most incapacitated of Rhode Island"s 18,000 licensed medical marijuana patients.

Home delivery has been on the books for a couple of years, but not until now have state regulators issued guidance to clarify what mandates the dispensaries would have to meet to safely deliver and electronically track each sale.

Among the new requirements:

Medical marijuana deliveries would go only to licensed Rhode Island patients who have no caregiver or authorized purchaser, are homebound or in hospice care or are undergoing chemotherapy or radiation treatment.

Each of those patients must have a Rhode Island doctor verify, in writing, her or his health situation.

All orders would be paid for in advance, and with a delivery fee of not more than $20. Dispensaries could not collect cash, tips or any other payment at the time of delivery.

Delivery vehicles could not possess more than $7,500 worth of medical marijuana products at a time.

Delivery vehicles must have two people inside or have one person following behind in a second vehicle, or be equipped with a camera that “films and documents delivery activity ... to the department’s satisfaction.”

Dispensaries could not refuse delivery based on where a patient lives and would have to be able to deliver at least once every 15 days.

All orders, payments and deliveries must be tracked in dispensaries’ computer systems. And state regulators “must have real time, and if requested, remote access, to these systems.”

The Department of Business Regulation would have to approve any delivery plan. The department stated it would start accepting home delivery plans from the dispensaries on May 1.

Chris Reilly, a spokesman for Slater, stated in an email Saturday that “We’re working with our security leadership team on a plan to submit to DBR to begin this service soon.”

The department's requirements, Reilly said, “call for substantial investments in vehicles, secure storage, personnel, surveillance, and GPS technology to track and monitor all deliveries.” But he said the service would be good news for patients because it “should allow enhanced, safe access to medicine for patients throughout” Rhode Island.

All three dispensaries have stated in the past that offering delivery service would be one way to compete with recreational pot stores opening in Massachusetts. Since the first retail store opened in the Bay State last November, numerous others have followed.

A Fall River store that sells both recreational and medical marijuana opened in January a few hundred feet from the Rhode Island border, and business there was brisk Saturday for the 4/20 holiday observance.

The origin of the 4/20 holiday is hazy, but the story considered most credible traces its roots back to the early 1970s, when a group of Northern California high school students would meet regularly at 4:20 p.m. to search for an unattended patch of marijuana that was rumored to have been planted nearby. The number, 420, became code for marijuana.