Efforts to add more dispensaries for medical marijuana increase in Ohio
COLUMBUS – For Stormy Clark, there’s no such thing as a quick trip to get her medicine.
A patient in Ohio’s medical marijuana program, Clark must drive 64 miles from her home in Proctorville, across the Ohio River from Huntington, West Virginia, to the nearest retail store in Jackson. But that dispensary doesn’t always carry the products she needs, so she’s been driving to Marietta – 105 miles each way.
A few months ago she drove three hours to Dayton to find the right marijuana products that relieve pain from a slipped disc in her neck. She had to stop every once in a while to stretch, to let the blood flow back into her fingers.
In addition to the high cost of medical marijuana – it’s not covered by health insurance – Clark pays more for gas and even had to replace a windshield after a truck spat a rock at her car.
When Clark was prescribed pain pills, she could get them for $4 a fill, at more than two dozen pharmacies within about 30 miles.
“We should not have to worry about being able to get medication,” Clark said. “If it was a pill, we would not be having this problem. We’d be able to go and get it no problems asked.”
It’s been almost five years since Ohio legalized medical marijuana and a little more than two years since sales first began at a handful of dispensaries. Now there are 52 dispensaries open out of 57 licensed.
But patients and industry experts say that’s not enough. The Ohio Board of Pharmacy, which regulates dispensaries, now agrees with them.
The board plans to add more medical marijuana retail stores later this year. But they likely won’t be open for business for 18 months. That isn’t much help to patients like Clark.
Timeline for new dispensaries in 2022
Before the board solicits applications for new dispensary licenses, it wants to tweak the licensing process. The board submitted those changes earlier this month, and the earliest they could be approved would be April 19.
It will take a few months to solicit applications and review them. The first time around, stores had six months from the time they got their license to build out and open up. No one was able to do that. The board wants to give them nine months.
The board also plans to encourage applicants in areas where none applied or qualified the first time by sharing data about patient demand, spokesman Cameron Mcnamee said.
“We all recognize the need for program expansion. It’s just trying to figure out a way to do it that meets all of the requirements in statute,” Mcnamee said. “We’re looking at geographic diversity, we’re looking at patient population.”
Mcnamee said the proposed rules should make the application review process go quicker and avoid lawsuits that can slow down licensing.
During the first round, the board took more than six months to review and score applications. The first dispensary wasn’t open until seven months after licenses were awarded. Most took a year to become operational and five haven’t yet opened.
Brian Wingfield, who co-owns Ohio Cannabis Company in Coshocton, plans to apply for more licenses. Wingfield said the competition will be stiffer the next time around, which will lead to better store owners and dispensaries for patients.
“When you have good-scoring people, they understand how to do things right and in the long run it makes it better for the patients,” Wingfield said.
Ohio could triple its number of dispensaries
Ohio’s medical marijuana industry is lobbying to add about 100 more licenses, nearly tripling the number of open dispensaries in the state.
There’s evidence Ohio can handle that many.
Ohio initially capped dispensaries at 60 statewide, based on an estimated between 4,600 and 51,000 new patients over two years. Ohio surpassed that patient count during its first year.
The board does not have a number of active patient cardholders, but more than 148,861 patients have made a dispensary purchase since January 2019.
Pennsylvania has a similar program to Ohio’s – similar conditions, similar restrictions. Sales started there about a year before Ohio, and Pennsylvania has more than 100,000 registered patients. Pennsylvania has 121 licensed dispensaries – more than twice as many as Ohio.
West Virginia, with a population of less than 2 million, has licensed 100 dispensaries. Huntington and Barberton, a few minutes drive from Clark’s home, will have 10 between them. Yet she won’t be able to shop there due to state laws prohibiting purchases by out-of-state residents.
Ohio is experiencing a bottleneck at the dispensary level, said Matt Close, executive director of the Ohio Medical Cannabis Industry Association. Several large-scale marijuana growers haven’t yet built out to the capacity of their license.
“Patient access is No. 1,” Close said. “When we grow by 5,000 patients a month, you just have to have more access for patients.”
About 1 in 5 Ohio patients have left a dispensary due to long wait times and 1 in 4 have left due to lack of selection, a state survey found last year.
Dispensaries would be distributed statewide
Like the initial licenses, the new ones would be distributed across the state taking into account patient population and need, Mcnamee said.
He said the board will assemble data showing the need areas that currently don’t have a dispensary close by, such as Southeast Ohio and the northeastern corner of the state. But its not yet known whether licenses would multiply by a certain factor or be added in a more targeted area to other parts of the state.
The proposed application rules didn’t change the cap on five dispensaries per company. Four Ohio companies have the max amount, and without a rule change, they won’t be eligible for additional licenses.
That unfairly penalizes operators who have proven they can do a good job, said Kate Nelson, president of The Botanist, which operates five dispensaries including in Akron, Canton and Columbus.
Nelson likened it to a country sidelining its best players at the Olympics: “If we’re getting to the place where we’re expanding licenses, the cap should be proportional.”
Nelson plans to ask the board to change that, as well as move forward with rules that make it easier for patients to buy the amount of cannabis allowed under state law. The state relaxed some of those limits last year, but Nelson said more could be done: “In a year of a pandemic, you need more flexibility than you ever could have imagined.”