LITTLE ROCK — The former director of the New Mexico agency that oversees that state’s medical marijuana program said Thursday that the language of Arkansas’ medical marijuana initiative more closely mirrors the law in his state than in others frequently condemned by medical marijuana critics.
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Medical Marijuana in Arkansas
If the act is approved by voters on Tuesday, Arkansas would join 17 states and Washington, D.C., in legalizing the medical use of the drug, though it remains illegal under federal law to possess or sell marijuana for any reason. Some states, like California, have made it far too easy to obtain marijuana, and their medical marijuana laws have severely undermined law enforcement efforts to combat the illegal marijuana trade, the Arkansas Faith and Ethics Council has warned.
But Arkansas’ regulatory program won’t be like those states, predicts Dr. Steve Jenison, the New Mexico medical marijuana expert.
“It might be more analogous to look at the state of New Mexico than the states of Colorado and California, which I think have a very, very different legislative structure and infrastructure,” he said. “Your bill has a lot of structure. I think it’s very well drafted.”
The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act is Issue No. 5 on the ballot. If approved, it would legalize some medical use of marijuana and require the state Department of Health to set up a system of nonprofit dispensaries to distribute up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana at a time to Arkansans with certain diseases or symptoms.
Also Thursday, Arkansans for Compassionate Care, the group supporting the measure, released the names of 79 doctors who support the measure at a news conference on the state Capitol steps.
On Oct. 24, about 20 doctors gathered in Little Rock to announce their opposition.
Dr. Clint Evans, who works in the Baptist Health emergency room, said Thursday that he is disappointed in the doctors who oppose the act.
“Patients get benefit from this, it’s very clear,” Evans said at the news conference. He said he consistently sees patients who have chronic pain and can’t get relief from other medications.
Family Council Action Committee Executive Director Jerry Cox, who opposes the act, said he thinks the doctors who support the act will be the ones to certify that a patient has a qualifying condition.
“There’s a relatively small number who end up writing all the notes. ... So I’m not surprised that there are a small number of doctors who support it,” Cox said by phone after the news conference.
The committee has vocally opposed the measure, often comparing it to Colorado or California, where there have been problems with the number of businesses allowed to sell marijuana and the number of patients who use it.
“Proponents of Issue 5 have said repeatedly it is much stricter than Colorado’s law. Well, we have compared the two, and we are not sure that’s the case. In fact, Colorado’s marijuana laws may be more tightly written than Issue 5 in some significant ways,” the committee said in a news release issued Wednesday.
It points to Colorado’s requirement that a minor be diagnosed by two doctors before being eligible for a registration card. Arkansas’ proposal requires diagnosis from one doctor. And that Colorado gives police access to the patient registry, while Arkansas’ proposal requires police to get the information from the Health Department.
Cox said the committee has compared Arkansas’ proposal to California and Colorado laws because those are the states where the most information is available.
“They are the ones that have been in the news a great bit,” Cox said. “If we had six months to work on this, there would be time to sit down and compare our law to the rest of the states.”
Jenison, the chairman of New Mexico’s Medical Cannabis Advisory Board and former medical director of the New Mexico Department of Health’s medical cannabis program, said Arkansas’ proposal is comparable to New Mexico’s law.
“I was amazed ... by how similar the draft Arkansas legislation is to New Mexico’s.In fact, it is more complete in some ways than ours,” Jenison said after Thursday’s news conference. “As opposed to some of the very early medical cannabis programs that arose from citizens’ initiatives, where the parameters of the program were far less well defined, and so people were sort of implementing without a lot of structure.”
The New Mexico Legislature approved its law in 2007. California voters passed a ballot measure in 1996, and Colorado legalized one after a citizens’ initiative in 2000.
In a fiscal impact statement released Oct. 26, the Arkansas Health Department estimated it would cost between $3.29 million to $6.38 million to implement the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act. The annual cost of staff and technology to oversee it would be between $2.7 million and $5.8 million.
According to the statement, 26 new positions would be needed for a newly created medical marijuana branch of the department.
Gov. Mike Beebe has said repeatedly that he is concerned about the cost to the state, especially when there are other pressing budget issues such as the estimated $350 million shortfall to the state Medicaid program.
Jenison said New Mexico’s program started with three employees. More staff members were added after six months, he said.
Jenison said there are currently about 8,000 registered patients in New Mexico, which has a population of about 2.1 million people.
“There was a certain amount of reticence on the part of both patients and certifying clinicians. We thought that maybe floodgates would open up, but in fact that didn’t happen. The enrollment was initially actually quite slow,” he said.
The Arkansas Health Department impact statement is based on the cost of overseeing 45,000 registered Arkansas patients, which department Deputy Director of Administration Ann Purvis said is comparable to other states.
In New Mexico, Jenison said, staff salaries are paid entirely by fees from growers. New Mexico growers are charged a fee based on how long the company has operated. It ranges from $5,000 for new companies to $30,000 for businesses that have existed for three or more years, he said.
Arkansas’ act limits the number of dispensaries to one per 25 pharmacies in the state - 30 total - and caps the fees that can be charged to $5,000 per new dispensary and $1,000 per registration renewal. Opponents of the measure have said that the fee cap means the program will not be self-sustaining, as the law requires.
Jenison said New Mexico also inspects growing operations, a move the Arkansas Health Department has indicated it would take.
“That is a really vital part of the responsible administration of a medical cannabis program. You want to be auditing carefully whether or not there is any possibility of diversion to the illicit market,” Jenison said.
He said people licensed to grow in New Mexico say diverting marijuana to unregistered users isn’t worth the threat of losing their legal business.
There are 23 licensed dispensaries in New Mexico, he said.
In that state, there has been little diversion of marijuana from large scale growers to unregistered recipients, Jenison said. There have been some cases where people licensed to grow their own supply have given marijuana to people not licensed to possess it.
Jenison said the Arkansas proposal, like the New Mexico law, makes it illegal to sell marijuana to people not registered as patients with the state.
Patients would qualify in Arkansas if a doctor certifies that they have cancer, glaucoma, human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), hepatitis-C, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Tourette’s syndrome, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, post-traumatic stress disorder, fibromyalgia or Alzheimer’s disease.
Marijuana also would be available for people suffering from a chronic or debilitating disease or medical condition or its treatment that produces certain symptoms.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 11/02/2012