MAINE TO OPEN FIRST MEDICINAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARIES ON EAST COAST,
BUT NOT WITHOUT CONCERNS

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 2 1/2 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."