Laura Nelson, M.D.. Chief Medical Officer, Arizona Department of Health Services Will Humble, Director, Arizona Department of Health ServicesThank you for your interest in the effective implementation of the AZ Medical Marijuana Act. We realize that many Arizona physicians may not yet feel comfortable with or fully informed about medicinal marijuana. It is likely that [...]
One of our objectives as we developed the final set of Rules for Medical Marijuana was to ensure reliable access to medication in rural Arizona. That's why we built in some incentives to encourage folks to apply for one of the rural CHAAs. First, we made sure that inventory could be transferred between dispensaries (and [...]
Many of the comments that we received at the public hearings were about how we'll evaluate and award the dispensary licenses. Many of the questions were about zoning, so here's a brief summary of how the zoning part will work: The final rules outline a 2-step process whereby applicants enter into a competitive screening in each Community Health Analysis Area [...]
We’ve published our final Rules for managing the upcoming Medical Marijuana Program in Arizona. We released the final rules and a series of fact sheets on our website first-thing this morning. The fact sheets are designed to help prospective qualified patients, designated caregivers, dispensary applicants and physicians understand the final set of rules (including dispensary application [...]
We’re finished making our policy decisions regarding the final medical marijuana rules, and our rules team will be spending Friday and probably part of the weekend crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s on the final medical marijuana rules. We’ll be releasing them on our website first-thing on Monday morning. We’ll also be having a [...]
Controlled Substances A few years ago, an Arizona law was passed that established a Controlled Substances Prescription Monitoring Program which requires pharmacies and medical practitioners who dispense Schedule II, III, and IV controlled substances to a patient, to report prescription information to the Board of Pharmacy on a weekly basis. The purpose of this legislation [...]
Under the provisions of the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act we had 120 days to get the entire program up and running. A short timeframe for this complex program (to say the least). That gives us until close of business on April 13, 2011 to have everything ready. That means we’ll need to finish the Rulemaking [...]
As I was looking through a weekly publication in the Phoenix area I noticed that there are several physicians that are already advertising their services for medical marijuana evaluations and certifications for a fee. Some of the ads and websites seem to imply that the certifications that physicians are writing right now will be [...]
As we get closer to implementing the AZ Medical Marijuana Act in mid-April, I thought it might be a good idea to post some information that may be helpful to physicians and prospective qualifying patients. Over the last weeks, I’ve been sent a number of articles and sources of information about the medical use of [...]
We received more than 1,500 comments on our second draft of the medical marijuana rules- bring the total number of comments to more than 3,000. We’ve posted all the comments on our hub website http://www.azdhs.gov/prop203/ (with personal information and foul language removed). We’ll be examining the suggestions over the coming weeks and expect to publish [...]
