The General
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When Shayne Lynn opened the state's first medical marijuana dispensary in Burlington last year, he figured the business would be serving 100 patients by mid-year. Try three times that. Four months into 2014, the patient base has soared to 325, with nearly three full months to go before the Champlain Valley Dispensary ends its first year of operation this June. "We're seeing two or three new patients every week," Lynn said in a recent interview. "It shows how great the need is for this."
The business has so outgrown its one-room facility on the Burlington waterfront that it will be moving this spring to a larger location nearby. Statewide, the number of Vermonters involved in the state's medical-marijuana program also is way up – setting off a range of complexities surrounding the drug's availability, effectiveness, quality control and other concerns. As of Wednesday, the number of patients approved to use medical marijuana was 1,182, up 90 percent from this time a year ago, according to data maintained by the state Public Safety Department.
There's also been a 74 percent jump in caregivers during the same period. As of last week, Vermont has 153 caregivers, people qualified to assist patients either by legally growing marijuana in small batches or obtaining it from one of the state's four dispensaries. For many medical-marijuana patients, legal access to strains of the drug has made a big difference in their quality of life. "It's been an amazing blessing," said Diane Nazarenko, 61, of North Ferrisburgh, who went through decades of pain from a back injury that occurred when she was in her 20s. "I'm able to sleep through the night for the first time in a very long time."
Yet the success of the medical-marijuana program in Vermont has come with its share of setbacks and struggles. Lynn said sales of medical marijuana come up short of the cost of producing and providing various forms of the drug. He said he's looking for investors to help the business expand and retire some of the start-up costs associated with the Burlington dispensary or a second one he oversees in Brattleboro. It's a paradox," Lynn said. "We've grown fast, but the pace of growth alone is not able to pay for the improvements we will need in the next two or three years."
In addition, federal laws preclude some patients from being able to obtain the form of medical marijuana in Vermont that their health problems require. Maitri Galloway-Melichar, 10, of South Burlington suffers from a severe form of epilepsy, and she has had to spend the past three months in Colorado, where the type of medical marijuana she receives to treat her condition is available. She can't get that strain in Vermont. Searching for the best form of medical marijuana to treat a particular health problem also is an unscientific process that can take time and offers no certainty of success.
Kimiko Yumoto of South Burlington, who struggles with a complicated neuro-degenerative disorder that affects her ability to walk, is hoping some form of the drug will relieve her pain, but she knows there's no guarantee when, or if, that will happen. "It's not a regulated drug, and there's no outside quality control, so there's no way to know what's in the stuff," said Yumoto, who became a medical-marijuana patient in January. "That's frustrating." But overall, glitches with the Vermont medical-marijuana program have been few, and the Legislature appears on its way to approve a revision that would allow the program to expand further. "Vermont's law is a tremendous model of success," said Matt Simon, an analyst with the national Marijuana Policy Project. "They've done a terrific job."
A delicate balance
As deputy commissioner of the state's Public Safety Department, Francis "Paco" X. Aumand III is most comfortable working inside the world of law enforcement. As the top state official overseeing Vermont's medical-marijuana program, he has the unusual task of assuring that qualifying residents obtain a drug that, under most other scenarios, would get them arrested. The program can pose some awkward situations for the former Bellows Falls police chief, he acknowledged. Under Vermont's guidelines, patients can obtain the drug from a dispensary, from a registered caregiver or by growing small amounts of marijuana themselves. Technically, he said, a qualifying patient would avoid arrest even if the marijuana were purchased from a street dealer. That's not true as far as the dealer is concerned, however.
"We don't care how patients and caregivers get their marijuana," he said during an interview at the department's headquarters in Waterbury. "What we care about is that they are registered and that they stay within the possession limits accorded to them by law." The law, however, contains plenty of conditions meant to prevent criminal conduct and to discourage abuse of medical marijuana. Patients and caregivers who obtain the drug are required to transport the plant in a locked container. And they can possess only a well-defined, small amount at any time.
Aumand said the state makes no overt effort to ensure that patients and caregivers follow the law. "We do not have authority to regulate and audit patients, but patients and caregivers still have to comply with the requirements of the law with regards to possession and use," he said. "A caregiver cannot be smoking marijuana." A majority of the patients qualified to obtain medical marijuana purchase the drug from the four dispensaries in the state. In addition to the facilities that Shayne Lynn runs in Burlington and Brattleboro, there are dispensaries in Brandon and Montpelier. The legislative revision under consideration would allow two more dispensaries to open. Under Vermont's medical-marijuana law, passed in 2004 and revised in 2011 to create dispensaries, Vermonters can qualify to receive medical marijuana if their doctor determines the person has "debilitating medical condition."
The process is complicated and involves several key steps:
- The patient's doctor must fill out a three-page Health Care Professional Verification form that details the nature of the patient's debilitating condition and verifies that the doctor has provided care to the patient for at least the past six months.
- The patient is required to fill out a separate, five-page Registered Patient Application form that spells out the rules for participating patients, detailing everything from the quantity of marijuana they can possess legally at any time to where they can ingest the drug and how to keep the plant secure. To assure applicants understand the law, the document requires that they affix their initials to each of 13 statements listed on the form, one of which reads: "I understand that any person(s) who knowingly provides false information to any law enforcement officer to avoid arrest or prosecution, or to assist another in avoiding arrest or prosecution, shall be imprisoned for not more than one year or fined not more than $1,000, or both."
- The applicant then provides the two documents to the state Marijuana Registry, a part of the Vermont Criminal Information Center connected to the Public Safety Department.
- Registry staff consult the doctor in every case and, if all the information on the two documents checks out, the person receives an identification card that allows him or her to obtain medical marijuana.
The card, which carries a $50 fee, must be renewed each year. The application process for a caregiver is similar to the patient form, but no doctor's form is needed. Instead, the process requires the applicant to agree to allow the state conduct a criminal background check. Most registry applications are approved – but not all, said Lindsey Wells, administrator of the state's marijuana program. "Only a small percentage of them are denied," Wells said. "The most common reason (for denial) is they do not have a qualifying debilitating medical condition."
A rejected applicant can appeal the denial to the registry's Marijuana Review Board, which can overturn the decision by a majority vote. That's never happened, Wells said. Doctors do not directly prescribe medical marijuana to patients and are uninvolved in determining the dosage a person receives. "The doctors make no judgment call with regards to a person's use of marijuana," said Aumand, the Public Safety Department's deputy commissioner. The application procedure for a marijuana dispensary is the most sophisticated process of all. It requires various financial disclosures, submission to federal and state background checks and evidence that the applicant has the skills to grow and market strains of marijuana in a reliable, secure way. Still, legal problems have arisen.
Johnson case
On Aug. 21, Vermont State Police Detective Sgt. Todd Baxter pulled into the driveway of an apartment house on Clark Avenue in Johnson. He was looking to speak with a person about an ongoing criminal matter. What he spotted soon after entering the building was a set of marijuana plants visible at the bottom of the stairway to the building's basement. "Can I help you?" Roger Paquin, 53, said as he emerged from the basement, according to a police affidavit on file at Vermont Superior Court in Hyde Park.
Paquin told Baxter he was listed as a patient on the state's Marijuana Registry. A second person Baxter met at the building, Malynda West, 28, told Baxter she was an authorized caregiver. The detective also was told the marijuana was being grown for former Stowe pharmacist Glenn Myer, 55, of South Burlington, another registered patient. "Paquin offered that they were transplanting 'lots of tiny marijuana plants,'" the affidavit stated. "Paquin spread his fingers out to approximately two or three inches indicating the size of the marijuana plants they were transplanting."
Baxter's investigation eventually determined that 138 marijuana plants were being grown under lights in the basement of the building. Other rooms in the basement were being used to process the marijuana and to make marijuana-laced baked goods, the affidavit stated. Paquin, it turned out, was not a registered patient. West was on the registry as a caregiver, as was Myer, but the quantities of marijuana being grown at the house far exceeded the limits prescribed by the law. The case, which resulted in the subsequent arrests of Paquin, West and Myer, marked the first and so far only known instance involving allegations of a major violation of the state's medical-marijuana law.
Paquin accepted a deferred sentence on a marijuana-cultivation charge earlier this month, according to court records. West and Myer have pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor cultivation charges, and their cases remain pending. If convicted, the two face a potential sentence of up to six months in jail and a fine of $500. Myer also has pleaded not guilty to three related probation-violation counts, according to court records. Aumand, the Public Safety Department deputy commissioner, said the Johnson case is a rarity but demonstrates what happens when someone tries to get around the law's controls on medical-marijuana cultivation. "It becomes a law-enforcement problem when ... somebody is out of compliance with the therapeutic-use program," Aumand said. "There's still measures that can be taken to criminally prosecute those people who violate the law."
Maitri's saga
There are other, less clear-cut problems with the medical-marijuana program and its implementation. Annie Galloway, the mother of 10-year-old Maitri Galloway-Melichar, was unable to find help through the program for her daughter, who began suffering an unending series of epileptic seizures four years ago. "We tried 12 or 13 different pharmaceuticals," Galloway said in a telephone interview last week. "But she was still having daily seizures." Last year, Galloway learned about Charlotte's Web, an extract of medical marijuana with an especially high cannabidiol, or CBD, content that can provide relief in what are called intractable epilepsy cases.
The strain is named after Charlotte Figi, who had symptoms similar to Maitri's and who was featured in a 2013 CNN documentary entitled "Weed." The drug, it turns out, is available in Colorado but not in Vermont. "They didn't have anything she could use," Galloway said, referring to Shayne Lynn's dispensary. "It was hard knowing there was a medicine that could make her life better and just sit in Vermont and not get it. For her, every day matters."
In December, Galloway and her daughter flew to Colorado. Maitri has been receiving daily doses of Charlotte's Web since early January, and the results are impressive. "It's helped reduce the seizures from 15 a week before to two a week," Galloway said. She added that there is evidence the treatments might even be providing Maitri the "neuro-protectants" that could heal her brain over the long term. Galloway said she blames the federal government, not Vermont, for the need to take her daughter to Colorado to buy the medical marijuana Maitri needs.
Although the federal government has allowed states to set up medical-marijuana programs –20 states now have such laws in place – the drug still is regarded as illegal under federal law, prohibiting the interstate transport of medical marijuana. "I really wish the federal government would let the boundaries come down so the medicine can be brought to Vermont," Galloway said. "It shouldn't be illegal." Lynn, the Burlington dispensary director, said his business can't afford the equipment needed to provide Maitri a homegrown version of the Charlotte's Web marijuana strain, but he looks forward to a time when it can. "To see how this drug changes people's lives, to be a witness to it, for me it's been a real eye-opener," Lynn said.
News Moderator - The General @ 420 MAGAZINE ®
Source: Burlingtonfreepress.com
Author: Sam Hemingway
Contact: Contact Us
Website: Burlington Free Press: Latest News in Burlington, VT
The business has so outgrown its one-room facility on the Burlington waterfront that it will be moving this spring to a larger location nearby. Statewide, the number of Vermonters involved in the state's medical-marijuana program also is way up – setting off a range of complexities surrounding the drug's availability, effectiveness, quality control and other concerns. As of Wednesday, the number of patients approved to use medical marijuana was 1,182, up 90 percent from this time a year ago, according to data maintained by the state Public Safety Department.
There's also been a 74 percent jump in caregivers during the same period. As of last week, Vermont has 153 caregivers, people qualified to assist patients either by legally growing marijuana in small batches or obtaining it from one of the state's four dispensaries. For many medical-marijuana patients, legal access to strains of the drug has made a big difference in their quality of life. "It's been an amazing blessing," said Diane Nazarenko, 61, of North Ferrisburgh, who went through decades of pain from a back injury that occurred when she was in her 20s. "I'm able to sleep through the night for the first time in a very long time."
Yet the success of the medical-marijuana program in Vermont has come with its share of setbacks and struggles. Lynn said sales of medical marijuana come up short of the cost of producing and providing various forms of the drug. He said he's looking for investors to help the business expand and retire some of the start-up costs associated with the Burlington dispensary or a second one he oversees in Brattleboro. It's a paradox," Lynn said. "We've grown fast, but the pace of growth alone is not able to pay for the improvements we will need in the next two or three years."
In addition, federal laws preclude some patients from being able to obtain the form of medical marijuana in Vermont that their health problems require. Maitri Galloway-Melichar, 10, of South Burlington suffers from a severe form of epilepsy, and she has had to spend the past three months in Colorado, where the type of medical marijuana she receives to treat her condition is available. She can't get that strain in Vermont. Searching for the best form of medical marijuana to treat a particular health problem also is an unscientific process that can take time and offers no certainty of success.
Kimiko Yumoto of South Burlington, who struggles with a complicated neuro-degenerative disorder that affects her ability to walk, is hoping some form of the drug will relieve her pain, but she knows there's no guarantee when, or if, that will happen. "It's not a regulated drug, and there's no outside quality control, so there's no way to know what's in the stuff," said Yumoto, who became a medical-marijuana patient in January. "That's frustrating." But overall, glitches with the Vermont medical-marijuana program have been few, and the Legislature appears on its way to approve a revision that would allow the program to expand further. "Vermont's law is a tremendous model of success," said Matt Simon, an analyst with the national Marijuana Policy Project. "They've done a terrific job."
A delicate balance
As deputy commissioner of the state's Public Safety Department, Francis "Paco" X. Aumand III is most comfortable working inside the world of law enforcement. As the top state official overseeing Vermont's medical-marijuana program, he has the unusual task of assuring that qualifying residents obtain a drug that, under most other scenarios, would get them arrested. The program can pose some awkward situations for the former Bellows Falls police chief, he acknowledged. Under Vermont's guidelines, patients can obtain the drug from a dispensary, from a registered caregiver or by growing small amounts of marijuana themselves. Technically, he said, a qualifying patient would avoid arrest even if the marijuana were purchased from a street dealer. That's not true as far as the dealer is concerned, however.
"We don't care how patients and caregivers get their marijuana," he said during an interview at the department's headquarters in Waterbury. "What we care about is that they are registered and that they stay within the possession limits accorded to them by law." The law, however, contains plenty of conditions meant to prevent criminal conduct and to discourage abuse of medical marijuana. Patients and caregivers who obtain the drug are required to transport the plant in a locked container. And they can possess only a well-defined, small amount at any time.
Aumand said the state makes no overt effort to ensure that patients and caregivers follow the law. "We do not have authority to regulate and audit patients, but patients and caregivers still have to comply with the requirements of the law with regards to possession and use," he said. "A caregiver cannot be smoking marijuana." A majority of the patients qualified to obtain medical marijuana purchase the drug from the four dispensaries in the state. In addition to the facilities that Shayne Lynn runs in Burlington and Brattleboro, there are dispensaries in Brandon and Montpelier. The legislative revision under consideration would allow two more dispensaries to open. Under Vermont's medical-marijuana law, passed in 2004 and revised in 2011 to create dispensaries, Vermonters can qualify to receive medical marijuana if their doctor determines the person has "debilitating medical condition."
The process is complicated and involves several key steps:
- The patient's doctor must fill out a three-page Health Care Professional Verification form that details the nature of the patient's debilitating condition and verifies that the doctor has provided care to the patient for at least the past six months.
- The patient is required to fill out a separate, five-page Registered Patient Application form that spells out the rules for participating patients, detailing everything from the quantity of marijuana they can possess legally at any time to where they can ingest the drug and how to keep the plant secure. To assure applicants understand the law, the document requires that they affix their initials to each of 13 statements listed on the form, one of which reads: "I understand that any person(s) who knowingly provides false information to any law enforcement officer to avoid arrest or prosecution, or to assist another in avoiding arrest or prosecution, shall be imprisoned for not more than one year or fined not more than $1,000, or both."
- The applicant then provides the two documents to the state Marijuana Registry, a part of the Vermont Criminal Information Center connected to the Public Safety Department.
- Registry staff consult the doctor in every case and, if all the information on the two documents checks out, the person receives an identification card that allows him or her to obtain medical marijuana.
The card, which carries a $50 fee, must be renewed each year. The application process for a caregiver is similar to the patient form, but no doctor's form is needed. Instead, the process requires the applicant to agree to allow the state conduct a criminal background check. Most registry applications are approved – but not all, said Lindsey Wells, administrator of the state's marijuana program. "Only a small percentage of them are denied," Wells said. "The most common reason (for denial) is they do not have a qualifying debilitating medical condition."
A rejected applicant can appeal the denial to the registry's Marijuana Review Board, which can overturn the decision by a majority vote. That's never happened, Wells said. Doctors do not directly prescribe medical marijuana to patients and are uninvolved in determining the dosage a person receives. "The doctors make no judgment call with regards to a person's use of marijuana," said Aumand, the Public Safety Department's deputy commissioner. The application procedure for a marijuana dispensary is the most sophisticated process of all. It requires various financial disclosures, submission to federal and state background checks and evidence that the applicant has the skills to grow and market strains of marijuana in a reliable, secure way. Still, legal problems have arisen.
Johnson case
On Aug. 21, Vermont State Police Detective Sgt. Todd Baxter pulled into the driveway of an apartment house on Clark Avenue in Johnson. He was looking to speak with a person about an ongoing criminal matter. What he spotted soon after entering the building was a set of marijuana plants visible at the bottom of the stairway to the building's basement. "Can I help you?" Roger Paquin, 53, said as he emerged from the basement, according to a police affidavit on file at Vermont Superior Court in Hyde Park.
Paquin told Baxter he was listed as a patient on the state's Marijuana Registry. A second person Baxter met at the building, Malynda West, 28, told Baxter she was an authorized caregiver. The detective also was told the marijuana was being grown for former Stowe pharmacist Glenn Myer, 55, of South Burlington, another registered patient. "Paquin offered that they were transplanting 'lots of tiny marijuana plants,'" the affidavit stated. "Paquin spread his fingers out to approximately two or three inches indicating the size of the marijuana plants they were transplanting."
Baxter's investigation eventually determined that 138 marijuana plants were being grown under lights in the basement of the building. Other rooms in the basement were being used to process the marijuana and to make marijuana-laced baked goods, the affidavit stated. Paquin, it turned out, was not a registered patient. West was on the registry as a caregiver, as was Myer, but the quantities of marijuana being grown at the house far exceeded the limits prescribed by the law. The case, which resulted in the subsequent arrests of Paquin, West and Myer, marked the first and so far only known instance involving allegations of a major violation of the state's medical-marijuana law.
Paquin accepted a deferred sentence on a marijuana-cultivation charge earlier this month, according to court records. West and Myer have pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor cultivation charges, and their cases remain pending. If convicted, the two face a potential sentence of up to six months in jail and a fine of $500. Myer also has pleaded not guilty to three related probation-violation counts, according to court records. Aumand, the Public Safety Department deputy commissioner, said the Johnson case is a rarity but demonstrates what happens when someone tries to get around the law's controls on medical-marijuana cultivation. "It becomes a law-enforcement problem when ... somebody is out of compliance with the therapeutic-use program," Aumand said. "There's still measures that can be taken to criminally prosecute those people who violate the law."
Maitri's saga
There are other, less clear-cut problems with the medical-marijuana program and its implementation. Annie Galloway, the mother of 10-year-old Maitri Galloway-Melichar, was unable to find help through the program for her daughter, who began suffering an unending series of epileptic seizures four years ago. "We tried 12 or 13 different pharmaceuticals," Galloway said in a telephone interview last week. "But she was still having daily seizures." Last year, Galloway learned about Charlotte's Web, an extract of medical marijuana with an especially high cannabidiol, or CBD, content that can provide relief in what are called intractable epilepsy cases.
The strain is named after Charlotte Figi, who had symptoms similar to Maitri's and who was featured in a 2013 CNN documentary entitled "Weed." The drug, it turns out, is available in Colorado but not in Vermont. "They didn't have anything she could use," Galloway said, referring to Shayne Lynn's dispensary. "It was hard knowing there was a medicine that could make her life better and just sit in Vermont and not get it. For her, every day matters."
In December, Galloway and her daughter flew to Colorado. Maitri has been receiving daily doses of Charlotte's Web since early January, and the results are impressive. "It's helped reduce the seizures from 15 a week before to two a week," Galloway said. She added that there is evidence the treatments might even be providing Maitri the "neuro-protectants" that could heal her brain over the long term. Galloway said she blames the federal government, not Vermont, for the need to take her daughter to Colorado to buy the medical marijuana Maitri needs.
Although the federal government has allowed states to set up medical-marijuana programs –20 states now have such laws in place – the drug still is regarded as illegal under federal law, prohibiting the interstate transport of medical marijuana. "I really wish the federal government would let the boundaries come down so the medicine can be brought to Vermont," Galloway said. "It shouldn't be illegal." Lynn, the Burlington dispensary director, said his business can't afford the equipment needed to provide Maitri a homegrown version of the Charlotte's Web marijuana strain, but he looks forward to a time when it can. "To see how this drug changes people's lives, to be a witness to it, for me it's been a real eye-opener," Lynn said.
News Moderator - The General @ 420 MAGAZINE ®
Source: Burlingtonfreepress.com
Author: Sam Hemingway
Contact: Contact Us
Website: Burlington Free Press: Latest News in Burlington, VT
