Providers of Medical Marijuana Face New Fears
By
KIRK JOHNSON MARCH 6, 2014
Photo
Muraco Kyashna-tocha, whose Green Buddha cooperative in north Seattle
dispenses medical marijuana. Credit Matthew Ryan Williams for The New
York Times
SEATTLE
— There should be, one might think, a note of triumph or at least quiet
satisfaction in Muraco Kyashna-tocha’s voice. Her patient-based
cooperative in north Seattle dispenses medical marijuana to treat
seizures, sleeplessness and other maladies. And with the state gearing
up to open its first stores selling legal marijuana for recreational
use, the drug she has cultivated, provided to patients and used herself
for years seems to be barreling toward the mainstream.
But her
one-word summary of the outlook for medical marijuana is anything but
sunny: “Disastrous,” she said, standing in her shop,
Green Buddha, which she fears she will soon have to close.
The
legalization of recreational marijuana for adults in Washington,
approved by voters in 2012 and now being phased in, is proving an
unexpectedly anxious time for the users, growers and dispensers of
medical marijuana, who came before and in many ways paved the way for
marijuana’s broader acceptance.
In the 16 years since medical
marijuana became legal here, an entire ecosystem of neighborhood
businesses and cooperative gardens took root, with employees who could
direct medical users to just the right strain; there are now hundreds of
varieties with names like Blue Healer, Purple Urkle and L.A.
Confidential, each with a variety of purported medicinal benefits.
Medical users could also start gardens in their backyards and keep large
amounts of marijuana at home. It was all very folksy — and virtually
unregulated, which the authorities say led to widespread abuses. Photo
There are now hundreds of marijuana varieties with names like Blue
Healer, Purple Urkle and LA Confidential. Credit Matthew Ryan Williams
for The New York Times
Now, under pressure from the federal
government, the state is moving to bring that loosely regulated world,
with its echoes of hippie culture, into the tightly controlled and
licensed commercial system being created for recreational marijuana,
which goes on sale this summer. (The first license to grow marijuana was
issued on Wednesday.) This week, the Legislature is debating bills that
would reduce the amount of the drug that patients can possess or grow,
eliminate collective gardens under which most dispensaries operate,
require medical users (unlike recreational users) to register with the
state and mandate that all marijuana be sold only by new licensees,
effectively shutting down the medical dispensary system.
Proponents
say the changes are needed to stamp out fraud and help ensure that
Washington has a uniform system, supplying the medical products people
need and want while at the same time passing muster with
guidelines issued
by the federal government last summer, even though marijuana remains
illegal under federal law. But many medical marijuana users and
dispensary owners say the rules will inadvertently discourage the
legitimate use of marijuana to treat illness and pain even as science
has increasingly been validating its therapeutic effects.
Trusted
dispensaries will be closed, they contend, and choices will diminish,
with the varieties that marijuana medical users prefer squeezed off the
shelves by more profitable recreational varieties grown for their
greater, high-producing THC content, not for headache or nausea relief.
In Seattle alone, about 200 dispensaries will have to close, replaced by
21 licensed retailers, and under current state regulations, employees
in those shops will not be allowed to even discuss the medical value of
the products for sale.
A medical marijuana user will certainly be
able to enter a shop and buy marijuana once the new stores are open in
June, but the old system of medical advice and supply, however flawed or
beloved, is over, say both critics and supporters of the new rules.
“Prepare
for the end,” said Hilary Bricken, a lawyer in Seattle who works mostly
with the marijuana industry, summarizing the advice she is giving her
medical marijuana dispensary clients.
Washington State’s
struggles — and the inevitable comparison with Colorado’s different,
smoother path toward retail marijuana — are being watched around the
nation, Ms. Bricken and other legal experts said.
California, for
example, with a medical marijuana system far larger but otherwise
similar to Washington’s in its absence of state controls, also has
active voter-initiative efforts pushing toward legalization. Twenty
states as well as the District of Columbia allow medical marijuana, and
at least 14 more are considering some form of it this year. Oregon’s
Legislature is wrestling with how to administer its dispensary system
even as efforts continue to put legalization on the ballot.
Colorado
avoided trouble mostly by acting early. There, state regulators stepped
in with strict rules for medical marijuana long before full
legalization. And after voters approved legalization in 2012, those
regulated dispensaries were put first in line for licenses, forming the
backbone of the new recreational market. The dispensaries had supplies
of the product in the pipeline — and expertise — which is why
recreational marijuana sales started there from the first day of
legalization, on Jan. 1, while Washington’s are still weeks away. Photo
A marijuana plant was trimmed at the shop. Credit Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times
In
Washington, some dispensaries might be well run, others poorly, but
without oversight, state officials could not know which was which. So a
clean sweep was seen as the only way forward, legislators say.
“We’re
moving from the wild, wild West to the regulated West,” said State
Senator Ann Rivers, a Republican and a sponsor of one of the leading
bills. A similar bill, sponsored by a Democrat from Seattle,
Representative Eileen Cody, passed the House last month.
Ms.
Rivers emphasized that her goal was to protect, not punish, marijuana
patients, though she said she understood their fear of change. Without
formalized rules allowing patients to continue growing their own plants,
for example (I-502, the initiative legalizing recreational marijuana,
prohibits that), and to have more than one ounce in their possession,
arrest and federal prosecution are a real risk, she asserts. Her bill
allows both.
A mandatory registry, she said, provided the legal
spine to those protections. Under her bill, a registered patient buying
medical marijuana at a licensed store with an “endorsement” from the
state to sell medical marijuana would also be exempt from the 25 percent
retail tax charged to recreational buyers. (Other state taxes, assessed
on growers and producers, would already be included in the retail
price.)
“The feds have been very clear, that if we don’t get our
ducks in a row, they are going to bring it to a screeching halt,” Ms.
Rivers said. “We have a chance right now to define our destiny with
this, and if we don’t we will most definitely allow the feds to define
our destiny.”
To many patients and providers, though, the
proposed mandatory registry is not a good thing. Some patients,
especially those receiving Social Security or other federal aid, have
said they will refuse to sign up because that would be a legal admission
of drug use that they said could jeopardize their benefits. Others have
told lawmakers they fear a loss of private information.
Some dispensary owners concede that the medical system was rife with abuses but that patients were now about to pay the price.
“The
state failed to regulate, allowing doctors to write these prescriptions
to 20-year-old gang-bangers on the street who said, ‘Oh, I hurt my knee
playing basketball,’ ” said Karl Keich, a dispensary operator and
founder of the
Seattle Medical Marijuana Association, a group of collective gardens.
Andrea
Mayhan, who takes medical marijuana to control muscle spasms and
seizures that she suffers as a result of a degenerative disorder, says
she believes she will be able to get the strains of marijuana she wants
because she knows what to ask for. New patients, though, might walk in —
or, like her, roll in using their wheelchairs — and find a clerk less
familiar with medical strains, or prohibited by state rules from giving
advice.
“They’re going to be lost,” she said.
