Pubdate: Thu, 09 Apr 2015
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2015 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: http://services.bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340
Website: http://bostonglobe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Kay Lazar

STATE REVAMPS MARIJUANA LICENSING PROCESS

For Dispensaries, Goal Is Transparency

State health regulators revealed an "aggressively revamped" process 
for licensing medical marijuana dispensaries on Wednesday, vowing to 
strip away the subjectivity and secrecy that they said had tainted 
the system previously.

Under the revised guidelines, dispensaries will be licensed in a 
format similar to other health care facilities, such as pharmacies, 
according to the state's new public health commissioner, Dr. Monica 
Bharel. Each application will be judged on its merits using clear 
guidelines and will move forward when the company meets the 
overhauled standards, Bharel said.

The process being introduced by the administration of Governor 
Charlie Baker represents a significant overhaul of the system that 
was rolled out by Baker's predecessor, former governor Deval Patrick.

The Patrick administration required marijuana companies to compete 
against each other and scored them based on vague criteria, Bharel 
said. When some encountered problems, the entire process was frozen 
for months, Bharel said.

"What we have in place now is a confusing, overly lengthy process 
that has delayed appropriate patients from getting access," Bharel 
told a meeting of the state Public Health Council, an appointed body 
of academics, consumer advocates, and physicians that writes health 
regulations. View Story

Delays drive away some investors

Months of controversy and bureaucratic delays in the Mass. medical 
marijuana program have driven away some investors.

Bharel said the problems that plagued the process under the Patrick 
administration were far more costly than expected, leaving her agency 
with a deficit of more than $1 million, mostly from information 
technology costs related to launching the program.

She said the department believes it has fixed those problems and 
"will be monitoring our finances very closely."

"So the way we would like to move forward with this now, in this 
application process, is to have clear guidelines that are transparent 
so that everybody understands what the standards are, and it becomes 
easier to figure out, and determine what the next steps are," Bharel said.

She said the revised process will be launched May 15, and will 
establish high safety standards, particularly for security and 
background checks.

Those issues undermined the process under Patrick. The licensing 
system was steeped in controversy almost immediately after Patrick's 
regulators awarded the first 20 provisional licenses in January 2014.

Patients, marijuana company executives, and unsuccessful applicants 
have complained since then that the process was mired in politics and 
conflicts of interest and lacked public scrutiny.

On Wednesday, patient advocates and marijuana company leaders said 
they hope the revamped process will shed the problems that ground 
everything to a halt for so long.

"The previous administration shut everybody out," said Nichole Snow, 
deputy director of the Massachusetts Patient Advocacy Alliance. "This 
new information is exciting and reassuring. We just hope we are 
invited into the process again as patients."

Jim Smith, a Boston attorney who represented one of the many 
unsuccessful applicants last year, said he is optimistic the revamped 
process will be freed from political influence. "This looks like a 
very fair and open process, and that's all anybody should expect," he 
said. "And that wasn't the case last time."

Smith represents a Colorado company, Good Chemistry, that had two 
provisional licenses, in Boston and Worcester, revoked last summer 
amid growing controversy about the process. Smith said Good Chemistry 
intends to reapply for the Worcester license but has not decided 
about other municipalities.

Bharel said that as her agency prepares guidelines, it will review 
the requirement that marijuana companies be nonprofits. Company 
leaders and some investors have said that requirement has hampered 
the licensing process and scared away investors, leaving some 
companies short of cash.

Bharel also said that starting Wednesday, her agency began posting 
updated information on its website about the status of each of the 15 
applicants granted licenses for dispensaries. The information is at 
www.mass.gov/eohhs/gov/departments/dph/programs/hcq/medical-marijuana/.

To date, the Department of Public Health has granted approvals for 
two dispensary companies to begin planting marijuana: one in December 
2014 to Alternative Therapies Group in Salem, and the other on April 
3 to New England Treatment Access Inc., to operate a dispensary in 
Northampton. New England Treatment Access will grow marijuana for 
medical use at a site in Franklin.

Thirteen other dispensaries are now provisionally certified and in 
the inspection phase. Those dispensaries will not need to be reviewed 
again under the new regulatory process.

On average, a dispensary in the inspection phase needs seven to 18 
months to acquire local zoning and building permits, undergo 
architectural review, complete construction, and pass the required 
inspections, according to information posted Wednesday by the department.

The posting also stated that once regulators grant permission for a 
dispensary to open, officials will conduct twice-monthly inspections, 
one of them announced and one that is unannounced.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom