The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
State lawmakers look to create cannabis ombudsman job
State lawmakers are considering a bill that would create an official Connecticut cannabis ombudsman, what one legislator describes as a liaison between medical cannabis patients and the state.
“We’re hearing about supply challenges and medical patients not being able to get what they want,” Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, said. “I think having a dedicated person who’s there to answer questions to medical patients is really the intent of this.”
Rojas said it is the responsibility of the state’s licensed growers to provide for the medical market.
Connecticut law requires cannabis growers to submit a “medical cannabis preservation plan,” to “ensure against supply shortages of medical marijuana products, which shall be approved or denied at the commissioner’s discretion.”
Earlier this year, about a week before retail cannabis establishments opened, a representative from CT Pharma, the largest of the state’s four licensed growers, said they were “committed to maintaining the supply for medical so patients can’t run out of medicine. That would never happen.”
When asked if his bill was a suggestion that state’s growers had not met their obligations to provide cannabis for registered patients, Rojas said yes and no.
“In some ways, yes, they didn’t meet their obligation,”
Rojas also stressed that the intent was to create some assurance for medical cannabis license holders. He said “it might come to a point” where the position would work on behalf of recreational users, “But that really wasn’t my focus.”
he said. “In others, I think it’s just part of the natural growing pains of standing up a new marketplace, and that’s not me defending them. That is just my observation of the world.”
Rojas called it “kind of a chicken-or-the-egg thing.”
“I don’t know that the producers are fully built out with the additional capacity to better ensure that medical patients can continue to get their supply of medical cannabis and fulfill the (recreational) market demand as well,” he said.
DCP spokesperson Kaitlyn Krasselt said the department was aware of concerns.
“We are aware some patients have expressed concerns regarding the availability of certain products following the opening of the adult-use market and the increase in the allotment for medical marijuana patients to 5 ounces per month, as allowed by the law,” she said. “The department is monitoring and evaluating the information in the seed-to-sale tracking system, complaints, and the medical preservation plans as well as communicating with the producers as necessary.”
The original draft of the bill called it an act “establishing the office of the cannabis ombudsman within the Department of Economic and Community Development,” and specified that the role would “oversee medicinal and recreational marijuana programs.”
But Rojas said it was “drafted incorrectly.” The new position would not fall under the auspices of the Department of Consumer Protection — though Rojas said the intent was not “to usurp the role of DCP” — and while it would reside within a different department, which one had not yet been decided.
Rojas also stressed that the intent was to create some assurance for medical cannabis license holders. He said “it might come to a point” where the position would work on behalf of recreational users, “But that really wasn’t my focus.”
“If there’s something that should be happening in our marketplace and it’s not, we would count on the ombudsperson to point that out for us, perhaps suggest recommendations,” he said, describing the role as “kind of a consumer advocate on behalf of medical users.”
Rojas said he did not know yet how much a salary for the new position might be, but said the current thinking was a twoperson team consisting of the ombudsperson and an administrator providing support.
The hope, he said, is that the position will not be necessary forever.
“It’s my hope that eventually this thing is just running like a fine-tuned machine, and maybe we don’t need that ombudsman anymore,” he said. “But I think, in the short term, for at least the first couple of years, I think it’s important for particularly medical patients to ensure that they’re getting the right kind of treatment, the right kind of product given that it is a medical prescription that we’re dealing with here.”
Rojas laughed when asked if the pun — calling the cannabis liaison an “ombudsperson” — was intentional.
“It just kind of worked out that way,” he said. “There’s a nursing home ombudsperson, I have an ombudsperson at my day job. It’s just a term that is used.”