HARRISBURG — The state’s first medical marijuana dispensary opens for business in Butler today, with five more expected to be open by the weekend.
“Pennsylvanians have been waiting years for this moment,” Gov. Tom Wolf said. “Medical marijuana is legal, safe and now available to Pennsylvanians suffering from 17 serious medical conditions.”
With it, Pennsylvania becomes the 30th state to allow people to use medical marijuana, including 22 states which allow the drug only to be used for medical purposes and eight that allow any adult to buy marijuana.“This is an important week. We are fulfilling the governor’s promise and the legislative mandate to get the medical marijuana program up and running in two years,” Pennsylvania’s Acting Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said Wednesday afternoon.
With the opening of the dispensaries, the state can now start getting this “important medicine to people who are suffering,” Levine said.
More than 17,000 patients have registered to participate in the medical marijuana program, with nearly 4,000 certified by a physician.
Levine said the other 13,000 patients will be certified once they meet with doctors who verify that they are eligible for treatment with medical marijuana.
Physicians continue to register to participate in the program, she added. To date, 708 have registered and of those, 376 have competed the training to become certified practitioners.
What the medical marijuana will cost those patients isn’t entirely clear, Levine said.
No health insurance covers medical marijuana and federal law bars Medicaid from covering the cost of it, so patients will be forced to pay for their medical marijuana out-of-pocket, she said.
The price will vary from dispensary to dispensary, Levine said, and also depends on the form of medical marijuana that is being used by the patient and how much the patient needs to use.
The national average cost of an ounce of medical marijuana was $320 in November, according to The Price of Weed, a global price index tracking the marijuana industry. The price tends to be lowest in states which also have legalized recreational marijuana. Pennsylvania’s current law only allows for marijuana use by people suffering from one of 17 medical conditions included in the 2016 law. Those conditions include chronic pain, epilepsy, HIV/AIDS and cancer, along with several other serious medical problems.
The state has no immediate plans to intervene to set prices statewide, she said. Instead, the price will be set by the market, though patients are free to use any dispensary they choose, Levine said.
Patients will have to contact the dispensaries to find out what their prices are going to be.
If price becomes a concern, the state could step in to set prices, but there are no immediate plans to do that, Levine said.
The Butler dispensary is just the first that will open. Others expected to open their doors in the near future include facilities in Bethlehem, Pittsburgh and Enola that will open Friday; and dispensaries in Sellersville and Devon that are slated to open Saturday.
“Our teams are crisscrossing the state inspecting dispensaries as they are ready to open their doors. Each week we will be adding locations where Pennsylvanians suffering from serious medical conditions can get this medication,” Levine said.
The state has awarded licenses for 27 dispensaries, of which 10 have been approved to begin selling medical marijuana.
credit:meadvilletribune.com