If all goes as planned, by this time next year New Hampshire could see as many as four stores selling medical marijuana – but we won’t see logo-bearing vans making dope deliveries, “Get your pot here!” signs flashing on street corners or cannabis-sampling booths for savvy shoppers.
Such prohibitions are among the thousands of details that can be found in 49 pages of proposed rules for what are officially called alternative treatment centers, more commonly called marijuana dispensaries. … Subscribe or log in to read more
If all goes as planned, by this time next year New Hampshire could see as many as four stores selling medical marijuana – but we won’t see logo-bearing vans making dope deliveries, “Get your pot here!” signs flashing on street corners or cannabis-sampling booths for savvy shoppers.
Such prohibitions are among the thousands of details that can be found in 49 pages of proposed rules for what are officially called alternative treatment centers, more commonly called marijuana dispensaries.
The state Legislature passed a law in 2013 (RSA 126-X) that allows the use of medical marijuana – actually, it’s therapeutic cannabis, and there was much debate over the exact term – sold at as many as four dispensaries, but details were left to rule making by the Department of Health and Human Services. The agency held a couple of public hearings and gathered comments – Thursday was the last day written comments were accepted – and is tweaking the results now.
The goal is to have a final set of rules approved by the DHHS commissioner by Nov. 6 so they can be reviewed at the Nov. 20 meeting of the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules, or JLCAR. If they give it the thumbs-up, the rules will be used when deciding who gets to operate dispensaries via a separate bidding process.
“If we meet all the aggressive time frames, and entities get up and running after selection, then a year from now isn’t unreasonable” for dispensaries to be open, said Michael Holt, rules coordinator for the Department of Health and Human Services.
Plenty of potential stumbling blocks will remain, as Massachusetts has found. That state passed a medical marijuana law in 2012, but more than two years later, licenses have been announced for just 11 dispensaries to open next year – there were supposed to be 35 of them open this year – and advocates are threatening lawsuits. Lowell is the closest location to Nashua for a proposed dispensary.
One potential obstacle is cost. It will take an $80,000 fee to get a New Hampshire state license to become a cannabis dispensary in New Hampshire, payable in three installments in the inaugural year and up front each year after that. The fee in Massachusetts is $50,000; in Maine, it is $15,000.
Under the law, patients will have to get a note from a doctor or other health care provider that they have one of a number of ailments for which cannabis can provide relief, and then will register with the dispensary to receive marijuana.
The proposed rules put plenty of limits on the dispensaries themselves. Here are some:
They can’t be in residential neighborhoods or within 1,000 feet of any school’s “drug-free” zone.
Their business name and logo can’t use “medical symbols, images of cannabis or cannabis products, related cannabis paraphernalia, and colloquial references to cannabis or marijuana.”
Signs exist only “to assist qualifying patients and designated caregivers to find the ATC without drawing undue attention” – which means, among other things, no flashing lights or illumination after hours.
When cannabis is being shipped, the transporting vehicle “shall not bear any markings to indicate that the vehicle is transporting cannabis nor shall it bear the name” of the dispensary.
They can’t sell or otherwise dispense cannabis samples, nor sell anything “other than cannabis, paraphernalia and educational materials about cannabis.”
Nobody younger than 21 can work there, and there’s no consuming marijuana on the premises – or “alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs.”
The rules also contain lots of details about the plants themselves, such as:
“Each batch of cannabis shall be tested for its cannaboid profile, to include at a minimum, THC, THCV, CBC, CBD, CBN, and CBG, by an independent laboratory located in New Hampshire.”
Each dispensary can have at most “3 mature cannabis plants, 12 seedlings, and 6 ounces of usable cannabis for each qualifying patient, “plus “up to an additional 80 mature cannabis plants, 160 seedlings, and 80 ounces of usable cannabis” as fallback or to provide to other dispensaries.
Also, waste from cannabis can’t just be tossed in the trash; it has to be “ground up and incorporated with non-consumable, solid wastes” such as paper, cardboard, food waste or “Bokashi or other compost activators,” then taken to a state-approved dump or facility.
New Hampshire has the advantage of not being an early mover: So far, 22 other states and Washington, D.C., have passed medical marijuana laws.
“We looked at rules from a number of states” when considering New Hampshire rules, Holt said, and “followed the structure of other health facility licensing rules.”
“The best piece of advice we got from other states was take it slow, take your time and carefully think this out,” he said.
David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashua
telegraph.com. Also, follow Brooks on Twitter (@GraniteGeek).
Rules say any NH medical marijuana store will be far from flashy
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