A group representing would-be medical marijuana dealers is objecting to what it says are burdensome - and illegal - rules being proposed by the state health department.
Allan Sobol, spokesman for the Arizona Association of Dispensary Professionals, said the law approved in November by voters requires state Health Director Will Humble to enact rules for how the system of distributing marijuana by non-profit organizations will work.
But Sobol said Humble has gone beyond what voters approved in imposing restrictions on when a doctor can write the necessary recommendation for a patient to buy up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks.
Humble said Proposition 203 does require there be a "bona fide physician-patient relationship." He said the rules are designed to do just that.
"What we're trying to do is create some checks in the system to provide some safety," he said.
"The other objective is to prevent this from becoming a recreational marijuana act."
He said that is what has happened in places like California and Colorado where would-be marijuana users can go into a walk-in clinic, get an examination and walk out with the required recommendation.
The rules Humble and his staff crafted have defined that requirement for a physician-patient relationship to mean that there has been contact for at least a year, with at least four visits dealing with the condition for which the patient is seeking marijuana.
"That's unheard of anywhere in the medical industry," Sobol said. "You can walk into an emergency room tomorrow morning and complain about backache or something and they would prescribe you OxyContin on the spot."
Humble pointed out there is an alternate option for patients: They can get a recommendation from a doctor without any prior visits if that physician conducts a comprehensive medical history and physical exam and agrees to take on the primary responsibility of managing the person's ailment.
But Sobol said that, too, is more stringent than required for any other medication.
Humble said some restrictions on who can write a recommendation for marijuana are necessary.
"What we want to do is make sure that physicians take that seriously, and before they write that recommendation they do a complete physical and a full assessment so that we don't end up with these doctors that are seeing 40-50 patients a day and just giving out recommendations every 10 minutes," he said.
Sobol also said the law specifically requires those rules be enacted in a way "without imposing an undue burden" on the dispensaries. What Humble has proposed, he said, does create significant financial problems.
One of the most notable, he said, is the requirement that would-be dispensaries have not only a specific location but a certificate of occupancy before being able to even apply to get one of the 125 licenses available.
"This would require an applicant to not only secure a location for his/her dispensary and cultivation center, but build-it-out as well at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, all at risk, since all is done without any assurances that they will obtain a license," Sobol said in his formal comments on the regulations. "This rule alone will serve to eliminate all but the wealthiest of applicants."
Sobol also said there is no authority for the health department to require dispensaries to obtain a bond, something he said would be outrageously expensive given that insurance companies are being asked to provide coverage for something that remains illegal under federal law.
Humble stressed that the draft rules are only preliminary. And he said the purpose for making them public was to get feedback like this.
More to the point, Humble said he wants to be sure that anything he is doing is within the scope of what Proposition 203 allows - and avoid the kind of lawsuit that Sobol said will be filed if these draft rules become final.
"The last thing I want to do is to fight some kind of battle in court over whether or not we exceeded our authority," he said. Humble said his agency will review all of the comments on the preliminary rules, which are due by the end of this week and then decide what changes, if any, to make.
Other objections by Sobol include:
• Requiring dispensaries to provide detailed information on cultivation, including the type of soil used and the watering schedule;
• A mandate for dispensaries to have 24/7 video monitoring by the health department;
• The need to spell out the weight of cookies and other products into which marijuana was infused;
• Limits on who can serve as a medical director of a dispensary.
PeacefulCat posted at 7:42 am on Wed, Jan 5, 2011.
There is a serious conflict of interest between the implementation of medical marijuana rules and the competing interests and goals of the ADHS. Marijuana is an important medication for alcoholism and drug addiction and it is offered as an alternative treatment in California and other states for people suffering from alcohol or that want to get off of damaging and addictive prescribed medications.
Will Humble is Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) and he has been with the agency at a high level since 1992. He controls approximately 2,000 employees and a budget of $2B. Mr. Humble is now in control of implementing the rules and regulations for the use, cultivation and distribution of medical marijuana here in the State of Arizona. Mr. Humble belongs to a culture of anti marijuana supporters. In many ways this group has prospered and personally and professionally advanced through their opposition to medical marijuana and the will of the people. They have turned their backs on science and common sense. Arizonans voted for medical marijuana in 1996 and 1998 and they were ignored. Now Arizona voters have passed Proposition 203 in November of 2010 legalizing medical marijuana for cancer patients and a few other serious illnesses. This was accomplished in spite of Will Humble and ADHS opposition and efforts to defeat the medical marijuana law.
There is a great conflict of interest here. The ADHS has a monopoly on the anti-depressant and chronic pain pill market for the poor. These powerful individuals have little incentive for allowing homegrown marijuana to compete with their synthetic drug distribution to the poor or the depression and addiction industry they control through Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS).
Many of these drugs the ADHS push are referred to as psych-meds on the street. Most marijuana users avoid these drugs because they are known to make people unstable, suicidal and violent. Many mental health patients prefer marijuana to alcohol and these highly addictive psych-meds and are offered a legal treatment alternative in California and other states.
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is concerned that these dangerous drugs are being over-prescribed in Arizona. Grassley requested Arizona’s spending data on prescription drugs for the Senate Finance Committee, who is calling for a federal investigation into the volume of prescription drugs that the government is paying out through Medicare and Medicaid.
In 2009 Arizona spent over $5.3 million on pain and anti-psychotic medications for its poorest residents. Senator Grassley discovered that Arizona’s top Medicaid doctors wrote between 500 and 3,000 prescriptions per year for several of these dangerous drugs that are under scrutiny. Arizona spent at least $1.3 million on Zyprexa , a schizophrenia drug, for Medicaid patients in 2009. State data show that one doctor alone wrote 2,977 prescriptions for Oxycontin and Oxycodone for AHCCCS enrollees in the 2009 fiscal year. The state paid a total of at least $527,449 for the drugs he prescribed to those patients.
This Arizona data lists the top 10 AHCCCS contractors according to their volume of prescriptions for the medications Alprazolam, Oxycodone, Oxycontin, Roxicodone, Xanax, Abilify, Geodon, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Risperdal and Risperidone. Senator Grassley wrote to Thomas J. Betlach, director of the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS), Arizona's Medicaid program stating: "The overutilization of prescription drugs, whether through drug abuse or outright fraud, plays a significant role in the rising cost of our health-care system,”
These drugs are filling our living rooms and our emergency rooms with heavily addicted and suicidal patients in epidemic proportions yet the ADHS is passing these pills out like candy. Will Humble will not implement unbiased, responsible and meaningful rules and regulations that would safely, economically and efficiently make medical marijuana available to the people that need it for many valid reasons. Will Humble and the ADHS are in direct competition with a normal medical marijuana policy.
Will Humble and his heavily funded cartel of medical marijuana saboteurs need to stand down. This sabotage will result in a continuation of wasted resources, unnecessary crime, suffering, drug addiction, death, social division and civil disobedience. The individuals responsible for prolonging this damage should be held accountable.
I would like to thank Stephanie Innes for providing some of the information I have used in this article from her Saturday, October 30, 2010 posting with the Arizona Daily Star. I have cleaned her political spin off the facts and added my own but the facts are the facts.
PeacefulCat posted at 7:51 am on Wed, Jan 5, 2011.
There is a great conflict of interest here. The ADHS has a monopoly on the anti-depressant and chronic pain pill market for the poor. These powerful individuals have little incentive for allowing homegrown marijuana to compete with their synthetic drug distribution to the poor or the depression and addiction industry they control through Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS).
Many of these drugs the ADHS push are referred to as psych-meds on the street. Most marijuana users avoid these drugs because they are known to make people unstable, suicidal and violent. Many mental health patients prefer marijuana to alcohol and these highly addictive psych-meds and are offered a legal treatment alternative in California and other states.
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is concerned that these dangerous drugs are being over-prescribed in Arizona. Grassley requested Arizona’s spending data on prescription drugs for the Senate Finance Committee, who is calling for a federal investigation into the volume of prescription drugs that the government is paying out through Medicare and Medicaid.
In 2009 Arizona spent over $5.3 million on pain and anti-psychotic medications for its poorest residents. Senator Grassley discovered that Arizona’s top Medicaid doctors wrote between 500 and 3,000 prescriptions per year for several of these dangerous drugs that are under scrutiny. Arizona spent at least $1.3 million on Zyprexa , a schizophrenia drug, for Medicaid patients in 2009. State data show that one doctor alone wrote 2,977 prescriptions for Oxycontin and Oxycodone for AHCCCS enrollees in the 2009 fiscal year. The state paid a total of at least $527,449 for the drugs he prescribed to those patients.
This Arizona data lists the top 10 AHCCCS contractors according to their volume of prescriptions for the medications Alprazolam, Oxycodone, Oxycontin, Roxicodone, Xanax, Abilify, Geodon, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Risperdal and Risperidone. Senator Grassley wrote to Thomas J. Betlach, director of the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS), Arizona's Medicaid program stating: "The overutilization of prescription drugs, whether through drug abuse or outright fraud, plays a significant role in the rising cost of our health-care system,”
These drugs are filling our living rooms and our emergency rooms with heavily addicted and suicidal patients in epidemic proportions yet the ADHS is passing these pills out like candy. Will Humble will not implement unbiased, responsible and meaningful rules and regulations that would safely, economically and efficiently make medical marijuana available to the people that need it for many valid reasons. Will Humble and the ADHS are in direct competition with a normal medical marijuana policy.
V32478 posted at 12:53 pm on Thu, Jan 6, 2011.
I'm sorry, but why on earth is the East Valley Tribune covering what some nobody says about our state's new medical marijuana law? I though EVT was more responsible than publicizing the ravings of some man, Allan Sobol, who has literally *no* experience in this industry, and moreso, who has had their right to prepare any legal documents in Arizona revoked. He is not a credible source and I am disappointed in this irrelevant reporting. What about the former proponents of the bill? Were they unable to be reached? It seems the writers of the bill and those involved directly with the campaign would have been a better source.
LEAPSpeaker_AZ posted at 11:12 am on Sun, Jan 9, 2011.
Why is the Department of Health writing rules for the physician-patient relationship? It seem the medical board would write guidelines like those for pain treatment with opioids.
Nearly 100,000 Americans die every year from adverse reactions to FDA-approved prescription drugs.
I find it funny we will have "rules" for doctors who prescribe marijuana, a drug that is safer than aspirin, but guidelines for opioids that can kill.
I was sad to see "non-profit" mentioned only a few times in the rules. As long as dispensaries sell medical marijuana at street prices, law enforcement will see them as drug dealers. Look at what's happening in California with dispensaries making a profit.
How did we come to make a worthless weed worth it's weight in gold?