Our Vital Health Statistics team along with our partners at the UA College of Public Health completed our Medical Marijuana Program’s 3rd Annual Report this week. You’ll find a wide range of information in the report including data about the demographics and kinds and qualifying conditions of our cardholders, geographic distribution and rates as well [...]
Last week I posted a blog that points out that the words "Marijuana" in the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act and "Cannabis" in the Arizona Criminal Code have different definitions... and that the distinction may be an important one for Qualifying Patients. The major difference is that the definition of "Useable Marijuana" in AMMA includes “… dried flowers [...]
The Superior Court judge ruled this morning that our requirement for Registration Certificate holders (dispensaries) to get an approval to operate within one year in order to renew their certificates is unreasonable. Because of today’s ruling, we’re going to accept renewal requests for all the current dispensaries in the state, whether they’re open or not. The [...]
The AZ Medical Marijuana Act also requires us to periodically accept petitions to permanently add new medical conditions to the list of conditions that qualify folks for a card. In Jan 2012, we’ve received petitions to add PTSD 1; PTSD 2; Depression; Migraines; and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. In short- I didn’t approve the petitions because of the lack of published [...]
This month marked the 2nd anniversary of our Arizona Medical Marijuana Program. We began issuing cards to qualifying patients 2 years ago this week, and as of April 16th we had about 38,000 qualified patients in AZ. On the Dispensary side of the house… 16 dispensaries are approved to operate in AZ, and another 13 [...]
Last week a Superior Court judge ordered Maricopa County to process the zoning paperwork that has been submitted by the applicant for the Sun City CHAA. The Maricopa County Attorney asked for a Stay of the decision while he appealed the case to the Court of Appeals. This morning, the Superior Court judge denied that request [...]
A Superior Court judge ruled today in the dispensary case concerning the applicant in the Sun City CHAA. The judge ordered the county to begin processing the required zoning paperwork. This was the only application for this area, so the next step for the applicant is to submit to us a completed application including the zoning [...]
For about four hours this morning, balls were hopping in the bingo machine as we randomly chose one dispensary for each of the 68 competitive districts. All the drawings are online for you to watch - there were 404 applications considered in the 68 drawings. There were also 29 CHAAs where there was only one [...]
The AZ Attorney General issued an Opinion and a media release this afternoon about the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act. The Opinion states, in part, that the voter approved Act is pre-empted by Federal Law – specifically the part that allows the cultivation, selling or distribution of marijuana. It references 2 recent court cases that states [...]
The voter approved list of conditions that already qualify patients for an AZ Medical Marijuana Registration Card (with a doctor’s certification) includes any of the following: any chronic or debilitating disease or medical condition (or its treatment) that causes severe and chronic pain, severe nausea, severe and persistent muscle spasms, wasting, or seizures, cancer, glaucoma, HIV, Hepatitis [...]
