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While the state Department of Public Health (DPH) continues to come up with regulations for the recently enacted medical marijuana law, municipalities are asking for more time to prepare their communities.
According to the law, the DPH has 120 days to sharpen guidelines for medical marijuana including a definition for how much constitutes as a 60-day supply and where treatment centers should be zoned. In the meantime, physicians can still license medical marijuana cards to patients who qualify and those patients can legally grow marijuana in their own homes.
Many municipalities feel they will be rushed to adapt to the DPH's regulations once they are enacted in May. In many cases the regulations will be put in place after municipalities have their Town Meetings, which would force them to wait almost a full calendar year or call a special Town Meeting before enacting local legislation.
Massachusetts Municipal Association (MMA) Executive Director Geoff Beckwith believes this doesn't give communities adequate time. As a result, the MMA is pushing to delay the law until July.
"In general towns don't have enough time to know and review and update their zoning bylaw and address the issue of zoning marijuana manufacturing," Beckwith said. "It's too quick and too soon to prepare and review something that was illegal that is suddenly legal."
In Acton, the Board of Selectmen unanimously voted to petition legislators for a delay. Board members said they wanted time to make decisions on zoning, personnel bylaws, licensing and other regulations.
Beckwith said because physicians can start issuing medical marijuana cards with no dispensaries available, communities will have to regulate marijuana grown on people's private property. He said towns don't want to deal with such an overwhelming scenario.
"The voters voted for this," Beckwith said. "The best way to deal with this is if the whole law was delayed so these questions could be answered ahead of time with this limbo or gray zone period."
Other communities, including Wakefield and Reading, have voted to ban treatment centers, but it is still unclear whether a ban can legally go into effect.
DPH
For now, the DPH is taking a low-key approach to announcing regulation plans.
Anne Roach, press secretary for the DPH, said there would be combination of internal processes and public input, but the agency has not determined a formal procedure yet.
"We are looking on developing regulations taking into consideration what other states have done," Roach said. "We want a smart set of regulations that benefit the state."
Roach said the process is a big undertaking and said the state needs to be smart about the terms of the discussion and where they would take place.
Roach acknowledged the pressures she would be feeling from special interest groups who want to sway the DPH's decision-making process.
One of those groups is the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS), which just released a resolution in December titled "An Act for the Humanitarian Medical use of Marijuana." The resolution calls for the MMS to work with the state Board of Registration of Medicine (BORIM) and DPH to sharpen the definitions within the law.
Dr. Jay Broadhurst a family physician, professor at UMASS Medical School and member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, hopes the DPH will work with the MMS to "define the nature" of the physician-patient relationship and clearly define the language in the law.
Broadhurst points out that without proper guidelines a physician could legally prescribe a medical marijuana card for alopecia (sudden hair loss) and diarrhea.
"It's so broad as to provide no guidelines," Broadhurst said. "What does cancer mean? If you have a cancer on your ankle that can be easily removed, it's still technically cancer. You could receive medical marijuana for that. To put a word like cancer on a list of diagnoses is useless since it's too broad."
Broadhurst, who spoke out against Question 3 during last year's election, said it's "sad" the law was crafted in a way would maximize the number of people who might qualify. It is for that reason that Broadhurst wants the DPH to work with the Massachusetts Medical Society so physicians must first have an active Massachusetts license, and subsequently both a Massachusetts Public Health Controlled Substances registration and a federal Drug Enforcement Agency registration before they can prescribe marijuana cards.
Broadhurst said the DPH has not responded to the MMS request to work jointly on regulations.
Broadhurst said among other definitions he hopes the DPH will responsibly define a 60-day supply, add an expiration date and make it so patients under 18 need parent permission before obtaining a medical marijuana card.
"There are a few thousand people in the commonwealth who could use marijuana usefully for their treatments," Broadhurst said. "The way the law is written a few million could obtain it. That encourages abuse."
News Hawk- TruthSeekr420 420 MAGAZINE
Source: wickedlocal.com
Author: Marc Filippino
Contact: The Harvard Post Contact Us
Website: Medical marijuana: More questions than answers - Harvard, MA - The Harvard Post
According to the law, the DPH has 120 days to sharpen guidelines for medical marijuana including a definition for how much constitutes as a 60-day supply and where treatment centers should be zoned. In the meantime, physicians can still license medical marijuana cards to patients who qualify and those patients can legally grow marijuana in their own homes.
Many municipalities feel they will be rushed to adapt to the DPH's regulations once they are enacted in May. In many cases the regulations will be put in place after municipalities have their Town Meetings, which would force them to wait almost a full calendar year or call a special Town Meeting before enacting local legislation.
Massachusetts Municipal Association (MMA) Executive Director Geoff Beckwith believes this doesn't give communities adequate time. As a result, the MMA is pushing to delay the law until July.
"In general towns don't have enough time to know and review and update their zoning bylaw and address the issue of zoning marijuana manufacturing," Beckwith said. "It's too quick and too soon to prepare and review something that was illegal that is suddenly legal."
In Acton, the Board of Selectmen unanimously voted to petition legislators for a delay. Board members said they wanted time to make decisions on zoning, personnel bylaws, licensing and other regulations.
Beckwith said because physicians can start issuing medical marijuana cards with no dispensaries available, communities will have to regulate marijuana grown on people's private property. He said towns don't want to deal with such an overwhelming scenario.
"The voters voted for this," Beckwith said. "The best way to deal with this is if the whole law was delayed so these questions could be answered ahead of time with this limbo or gray zone period."
Other communities, including Wakefield and Reading, have voted to ban treatment centers, but it is still unclear whether a ban can legally go into effect.
DPH
For now, the DPH is taking a low-key approach to announcing regulation plans.
Anne Roach, press secretary for the DPH, said there would be combination of internal processes and public input, but the agency has not determined a formal procedure yet.
"We are looking on developing regulations taking into consideration what other states have done," Roach said. "We want a smart set of regulations that benefit the state."
Roach said the process is a big undertaking and said the state needs to be smart about the terms of the discussion and where they would take place.
Roach acknowledged the pressures she would be feeling from special interest groups who want to sway the DPH's decision-making process.
One of those groups is the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS), which just released a resolution in December titled "An Act for the Humanitarian Medical use of Marijuana." The resolution calls for the MMS to work with the state Board of Registration of Medicine (BORIM) and DPH to sharpen the definitions within the law.
Dr. Jay Broadhurst a family physician, professor at UMASS Medical School and member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, hopes the DPH will work with the MMS to "define the nature" of the physician-patient relationship and clearly define the language in the law.
Broadhurst points out that without proper guidelines a physician could legally prescribe a medical marijuana card for alopecia (sudden hair loss) and diarrhea.
"It's so broad as to provide no guidelines," Broadhurst said. "What does cancer mean? If you have a cancer on your ankle that can be easily removed, it's still technically cancer. You could receive medical marijuana for that. To put a word like cancer on a list of diagnoses is useless since it's too broad."
Broadhurst, who spoke out against Question 3 during last year's election, said it's "sad" the law was crafted in a way would maximize the number of people who might qualify. It is for that reason that Broadhurst wants the DPH to work with the Massachusetts Medical Society so physicians must first have an active Massachusetts license, and subsequently both a Massachusetts Public Health Controlled Substances registration and a federal Drug Enforcement Agency registration before they can prescribe marijuana cards.
Broadhurst said the DPH has not responded to the MMS request to work jointly on regulations.
Broadhurst said among other definitions he hopes the DPH will responsibly define a 60-day supply, add an expiration date and make it so patients under 18 need parent permission before obtaining a medical marijuana card.
"There are a few thousand people in the commonwealth who could use marijuana usefully for their treatments," Broadhurst said. "The way the law is written a few million could obtain it. That encourages abuse."
News Hawk- TruthSeekr420 420 MAGAZINE
Source: wickedlocal.com
Author: Marc Filippino
Contact: The Harvard Post Contact Us
Website: Medical marijuana: More questions than answers - Harvard, MA - The Harvard Post
