Licensing Mistakes Stall Massachusetts Medicinal Dispensaries

Two years after the overwhelming majority of Massachusetts voters approved the use of medical cannabis, the state still has a grand total of zero medical dispensaries opened up. What’s the cause of the hold up? Why isn’t the voice of the people being heard in Massachusetts? The answer lies in a failure of the state licensing process by officials.

In one case, a contractor hired by the state health department to rank companies interested in opening medicinal cannabis dispensaries, indicated in internal emails that they ran out of time to conduct sufficient checks for some businesses applications. Despite the shoddy work, records show the health department extended the company’s contract and more than doubled its pay.

In another case a contractor was awarded a lucrative deal for running in-depth background checks on applicants, but failed to detect a couple who had lost their dispensary license in Colorado for failing to follow regulations. These cases demonstrate the failings of the state licensing process in actually doing a sufficient job when approving applicants for licensure.

“I have heard of minor complications in other states. But I have not seen anything that raised eyebrows… like in Massachusetts,” said Karen O’Keefe, of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C.

In the fall of 2013, the state hired two companies to help with the licensing process. One company was to review the many pages of documents sent in by 100 applicants and rank the proposals. The other was to run background checks on over 600 individuals working with cannabis companies. The state made a huge mistake in not asking either company to verify claims made by applicants for licensure. So the companies simply took applicants claim’s as truth without question, leading to major problems when it was discovered that some applicants had misrepresented their claims.

“Massachusetts underestimated the time commitment it would take,” said Todd Brown, vice chairman of the Department of Pharmacy and Health Systems Sciences at Northeastern University. “And now it’s taking more time because they have had to backtrack.”

“Delays in implementation have been devastating to patients,” said Matt Allen, executive director of the Massachusetts Patient Advocacy Alliance. “Patients are forced into unsafe situations as they continue to go to the black market in search of [cannabis] . . . being robbed, assaulted, or purchasing medicine that is not tested to be free of contaminants.”

The errors made during the licensing process have caused a lot of trouble for those sorting out the ordeal and for patients who have not been given access to dispensaries where they can pick up their medication.

The state health department has been tied up with over 25 lawsuits filed against it, and continued confusion and ambiguity surrounding the licensing process. Many applicants have complained that the application process is arbitrary and unfair. The state may not be putting enough time and resources into actually doing a good job of screening applications. Some speculate that dispensaries may open up in Massachusetts as early as this winter, but it remains to be seen whether or not the state will be able to get its act together.