Waterbury, Vermont - January 10, 2012
The Department of Public safety answers questions posed by the legislature about how Vermont can implement medical marijuana dispensaries.
Vermont has more than 400 registered medical marijuana patients. Many are eagerly anticipating the scheduled July opening of dispensaries, but several hurdles must be cleared before that becomes a reality.
A recently released report cleared one such hurdle Tuesday, as Vermont's Department of Public Safety answered three questions posed by the legislature.
The first task for the administrators, determine the actual and projected costs of administering the state's new medical marijuana dispensary law.
"There's no general fund monies that will be used to offset this program, it will all be generated through fees," said Paco Aumand, a division director at the Department of Public Safety.
He says fees that will be imposed on dispensaries and patients are based on the projected cost of the program. The report estimates those costs to be slightly less than $140,000 in fiscal year 2013 - most of which would be paid by the dispensaries.
Question number two asked administrators how dispensaries could deliver marijuana to patients. "We offer no recommendation as to whether it should be done but we've come up with a concept that's been used in Maine," said Aumand.
Currently, the law prohibits marijuana delivery, but if lawmakers change that, Aumand envisions a ticket system for packages. In-transit marijuana would be locked, and marked with the name of the sender, recipient, and its contents.
Aumand said the final question - whether patients who receive marijuana from a dispensary should also be able to grow their own medicine - can't be fully-answered yet. That's banned under the law, but two thirds of respondents to a patient survey say they'd like to see that changed.
"Therefore our preliminary position is that possession limits should really be the guiding principle around whether a person should grow marijuana versus getting it from a dispensary," said Aumand.
The department has requested more time to consider that question. Aumand said they'll likely reinvestigate that matter once dispensaries are in place.
He said he also expects a committee to present new proposed rules for medical marijuana to the legislature in a couple of weeks time.
Aumand said federal raids on dispensaries in other states have not had any real bearing on Vermont's program. The federal prosecutor for Vermont said he hasn't seen the report yet and therefore had no comment.
