Maine's medical scene

01:00 AM EST on Sunday, March 6, 2011
By Tracy Breton
Journal Staff Writer


If all goes as planned, the Rhode Island Department of Health will announce Tuesday who has been selected to open dispensaries that will legally sell marijuana to patients who have been certified by doctors as needing the drug to help cope with debilitating pain or disease.

But even if the groups proposing dispensaries go on a fast track to build facilities and start growing product, Rhode Island will not be the first state in New England to open such businesses.

By the end of this month, one state-regulated dispensary will open in Frenchville, Maine, on the Canadian border, according to John Thiele, program manager for Maine’s Medical Use of Marijuana Program. It will be the first on the East Coast.

Two more dispensaries are expected to open, one in Biddeford and another in Ellsworth, by the end of April. A fourth, located in a shopping plaza in Auburn, plans to open in May, run by a couple, Tim and Jenna Smale.

Both Rhode Island and Maine have allowed medicinal marijuana for several years –– since 1999 in Maine, and beginning in 2006 in Rhode Island. The programs were started in both states to help people who claimed to get little relief from prescription drugs to cope with pain, wasting syndrome and agitation caused by a host of conditions, including cancer, HIV and Alzheimer’s disease. According to the administrators of the respective programs, it’s not elderly cancer or AIDS patients who most often register to legally use marijuana, but those with “other” chronic conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and degenerative bone disease.

Like Rhode Island, Maine has central control over medicinal marijuana dispensaries and over their monitoring. But in Maine, there has been considerable opposition to the creation of the dispensaries and concerns over their potential effect on public safety.

In Rhode Island, where one to three dispensaries have been authorized, the opposition has been relatively muted. Cranston Mayor Alan Fung, a former state prosecutor, was one of just a few people who testified against the dispensaries at a recent Department of Health hearing on the applications by the 18 entities that want dispensary licenses.

Fung said that while he finds the concept of medicinal marijuana “noble,” he objects to the dispensaries on legal grounds. The federal government still classifies cannabis as “a dangerous drug,” he pointed out, and he thinks dispensaries will create too much work for his Police Department.

There are two dispensary proposals for Cranston and a third group wants to grow marijuana there for dispensary sale elsewhere.

Tim Smale has used medicinal marijuana for about eight years for migraine headaches, and his wife is his caregiver. They got their first taste of dispensaries when they were living in California, and “we are now tapping into all of our savings and have secured loans from trusted friends and family who have a similar vision” for their new business, Remedy Compassion Center. It will operate next door to a crafts store in a shopping plaza that also includes a Bed Bath & Beyond and a movie theater.

Thiele, the government administrator who will oversee the dispensary program in Maine, anticipates that dispensaries like the one the Smales are opening will provide a more accessible way for some of Maine’s most pain-ridden residents to legally get marijuana.

Now, as is the case in Rhode Island, people using marijuana for medical reasons must either grow it themselves or get it from a grower or caregiver.

The dispensaries in Maine are seen as a new source of revenue for a cash-strapped state which, like Rhode Island, is hungry for revenue. Product sold will be subject to Maine’s 5-percent sales tax, and everyone from patients, caregivers and officers, board members and employees of the dispensaries will have to pay annual registration fees.

But the law in Maine that is allowing the dispensaries to open –– which for the first time regulates the delivery system for medicinal marijuana –– has been hard to implement. It has also caused a lot of ill will among various constituencies.

Guy Cousins, director of the Office of Substance Abuse within the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, which now administers the medical marijuana program, testified against the bill that authorized dispensaries when it was being considered by the legislature in 2009, citing public safety issues.

Allowing patients or caregivers to possess 2½ ounces of marijuana every 15 days will lead to diversion of the drug to family members or friends, either by sale or theft, he said.

The state, he complained, will be saddled with increased administrative costs to keep track of participants in the program.

The Maine Medical Association opposed the original medical marijuana law based on “medical risks associated with marijuana use,” but took no position on the legislation authorizing dispensaries.

Roy McKinney, director of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, testified that while it might appear that the state would regulate storefront medical marijuana dispensaries like it regulates pharmacies, “nothing could be further from the truth.

Numerous California communities that have permitted dispensaries have found that they have resulted in negative and harmful secondary effects, including significant increases in traffic, crime and noise,” he said.

The Maine Chiefs of Police Association opposed the referendum that created the dispensaries. Robert Schwartz, executive director, said the group’s position was based on “public safety issues and addictions that people have had. It leads to other drugs.”

In addition to public safety concerns, there has been some push-back from municipalities. Some cities and towns in Maine have passed moratoriums to block dispensaries from opening. This has forced some dispensary operators to change site plans.

And the task of administering the program has proved to be a nightmare for Thiele, who with the help of just one data-entry operator, has been required in the last two months to process more than 1,000 applications from certified patients and caregivers. Although medicinal marijuana became legal in the state 12 years ago, registration cards were never required until Jan. 1 of this year. Because it costs money to register, most people “waited until the last minute” to do so, Thiele said.

Rhode Island has always required medical marijuana users and growers to register with the Department of Health. But the state could face a crush of applications if dispensaries suddenly opened and marijuana becomes more accessible for medicinal use.

Thiele finds that he now has a backlog of applications. Approximately 100 card applications sit on his desk, submitted by patients who’ve been certified by doctors to legally have the drug or by their designated growers. “We’re just overwhelmed,” he says, wondering out loud whether he’s ever going to find time to conduct inspections of those who get certified as caregivers and of the new dispensaries that will soon open.

Jonathan Leavitt, who heads a caregivers lobbying organization in Maine and who was the force behind a citizens initiative that collected 85,000 signatures from Maine residents to get the medical-marijuana-dispensary bill on the ballot in 2009, says “marijuana in Maine is the number-one cash crop in the state.”

“You would not believe how much of the economy of Maine is directly or indirectly related to the production of marijuana,” Leavitt said. “In small towns, members of boards of selectman and law enforcement officers are growers, dealers or patients. It’s a big fabric of Maine life, from people in their 60s and 70s to people down in their 20s. We sat in front of state representatives when we testified on the bill who grew it.”

He said one of the main reasons he was in favor of the dispensary legislation was to increase patient access to medical marijuana. In Maine, many physicians tend to be older and “not well educated about the medical benefits of marijuana,” and since much of the state is rural, patients –– some of whom still can’t even find doctors to approve marijuana use –– needed an additional supply source.

Thiele said that one of the criteria for selecting who got the dispensary licenses was their delivery systems. “They’ve promised to do home deliveries to the disabled and they’ve said they’ll deliver 7 days a week.”

But that’s the rub. Now, what Thiele referred to as Maine’s “cottage industry” of caregivers feel betrayed by what they see as “big business” dispensaries cutting into their ability to make a living.

“What’s emerged is so out of whack with what we envisioned,” Leavitt said. “When this started, we envisioned small mom and pop stores in every city and town in the state that would complement the almost nonexistent caregiver system in the state but not put the dispensaries at a big disadvantage. We envisioned a horizontal framework where caregivers and dispensaries would be on an equal footing and work symbiotically and on a scale that was really, really sustainable.

“But the legislature altered the law so significantly that we don’t think dispensaries are a viable option anymore. So much capital is required to open them that it disqualified 99.999 percent of the people of Maine from operating them.”

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Aeroguerilla said:

Overwhelmed is that why i havnt got my license yet? its been almost a month since i was approved.. I got 2 more patients that need to make appointments also... looks like ill only be doing 6 smartpots in the backyard this year =( i was looking forward to 18!!!

Yea this whole dispensary thing is starting to piss me right the fuck off...

when are they going to right up a bill so that we as patients and caregivers can supply the dispansarys with our product?? this would be the right approach.. keep everyone in biz

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mrktwiz said:

You go Maine, if your lucky you'll get EVERYTHING your heart desires and be going in 2-3 years WTF just happened?

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mrktwiz said:

Wait till you go FULL legal in Maine and see what the dispensaries PAY you for all your hard work.

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LD 1192 (HP883) An Act To Require That Marijuana Seized by Law Enforcement Officers Be Tested and Made Available for Use by Authorized Medical Marijuana Dispensaries

Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety http://www.state.me.us/legis/house/jt_com/crj.htm

http://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/bills/bills_125th/billtexts/HP088301.asp

This bill requires marijuana seized by law enforcement officers to be tested by a state laboratory and if found safe for use to be made available to a registered dispensary.

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Amber Trich said:

obviously med pot was never about health or patients.. its about us fighting to be free and mega corps taking a grab at whats ours -typical.



locally grown, stolen by the state and resold by big bizz... dont think those profits will recirculate in OUR communities..

luckily they can never stop us, maine loves pot too much

whats going on in RI is exactly what we cannot let happen here. Our state is too economically deprived and ecologically rich to stand for being over run by a bunch of money grabbing fat cats.

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Amber Trich said:

obviously med pot was never about health or patients.. its about us fighting to be free and mega corps taking a grab at whats ours -typical.



locally grown, stolen by the state and resold by big bizz... dont think those profits will recirculate in OUR communities..

luckily they can never stop us, maine loves pot too much

whats going on in RI is exactly what we cannot let happen here. Our state is too economically deprived and ecologically rich to stand for being over run by a bunch of money grabbing fat cats.

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NEW ENGLAND said:

To top it all off,SUMMIT (compassion center)that's now trying to take away the patient as well as caregivers rights to cultivate here in RI,are hiring all there growers from Cali.

Just when I thought the Sapranos had ended,Surprise they are opening a dispencery in RI.I hope things work out better for all you in Maine,because everything we've fought and lobbyed for here in RI is circling the bowl.Too much money to be made here by the Tony's and the Vinny's......BADA BING!

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Amber Trich said:

Its sad and scary.. we do the work, cali corps reap the profit, we continue to fill prisons... typical I guess

its so fcked we are the only industrialized country with no health care, a complete prison state and now in the face of the potentially worst nuclear release ever our president is pressing for more billions of dollars for more nuke plants in OUR country??

Im pretty sure they are just feeding us junk food and television to keep us too weak to revolt.

The best response I can think of is growing as much mind and spirit liberating ganja as possible.. The varieties we choose are our biggest contribution and highest influence. Strains that make people want to live for revolution.

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emerald city said:

Wanted to put together a list of breeds that are in Maine.
List only what you've personaly seen.No stories from years gone by.
1. ecsd
2. maine red bud
3.[soma's] nycd
4. MOB
5.grapefruit x RB crosses[gfxrb1-gfrb2-gf3rb etc]
6. GF3 X ECSD
7. hashbud
8. donkey dick
9. trainwreck
10.poisen durban [both indoor/outdoor]
11.snowdog

and a whole bunch of crap not worth mentioning.....GO.....:dance013

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