DPH overhauls medical marijuana licensure process

The Department of Public Health has announced significant changes to the state’s medical marijuana program that could result in an increase in the number of licensed dispensaries across the state.

The primary revision, according to a statement from the DPH, is that medical marijuana dispensaries will be licensed similarly to other health care facilities, such as pharmacies.

The DPH has revised the application, which will be available on the DPH website on May 15, and applications will now be accepted on a rolling basis.

Each submission will be evaluated individually, based upon the applicant’s ability to meet safety and suitability standards, particularly with regard to security and background checks. Applicants will not be evaluated relative to each other, but instead on the strength of the application itself.

In previous program application rounds, applications were evaluated in comparison to other applications in the same county, with only the best one or two applications in each county pool receiving licenses.

“What we have in place now is a confusing, overly lengthy process that has delayed appropriate patients from getting access,” said DPH Commissioner Dr. Monica Bharel in the statement. She said the changes “will create a more efficient, market-driven licensure process that allows the Commonwealth to maintain the highest standards of both public safety and accountability.”

The state’s voter-passed medical marijuana law authorized the licensing of up to 35 dispensaries in the first year of the program’s operation, with at least one, but no more than five, in each county. Additional dispensaries could be licensed by the DPH in subsequent years, based upon the needs of the state’s population.

No dispensaries were licensed in the program’s first year (2013), however, and the law’s limitations on the number of dispensaries that the DPH may license have since expired.

Two dispensaries have been licensed to date – one in Salem and one in Northampton – but they are not yet fully operational. An additional 13 dispensaries have received provisional licenses.

Four counties – Berkshire, Dukes, Nantucket and Worcester – are without provisionally licensed dispensaries.

Based on the experience of other states that have implemented medical marijuana programs, up to 2 percent of the population is expected to participate in the program.