New England Public Radio

Doctors’ Group Pushes for Reclassifying Marijuana

The Massachusetts Medical Society is pushing harder for the federal government to reclassify marijuana so it’s easier to study.

The physicians’ trade group has gone on the record before saying marijuana should no longer be considered a dangerous Schedule-One drug — the same category as heroin and LSD.

The Massachusetts Medical Society has now voted to ask individual members to write to federal lawmakers and advocate for the change. That way, says MMS spokesperson Rick Gulla, researchers will have more access to the plant for medical studies.

“Doctors want to know what exactly, if any, are the medical benefits of marijuana,” says Gulla. “The research is fairly thin and it’s a puzzlement for physicians in terms of whether or not they should recommend it.”

Massachusetts is among 23 states that have legalized medical marijuana.

Medical Marijuana 101: What Does A Dispensary Worker Need To Know?

As the marijuana industry takes shape in Massachusetts, it will need a trained workforce. What skills will that person behind the dispensary counter have? How about employees who will process marijuana? Who’s training these workers? Here’s a glimpse as the Northeastern Institute of Cannabis (NIC) in Natick opens its doors.

On a sunny fall afternoon, men and women sat at tables in a stark white classroom. For that day, the class was called “patient services.”

“Get a complete list of symptoms, right at the beginning,” instructor Bill Downing said. “Ask your patients, ‘How long have you suffered from this condition?’ It gives you a feeling for what their situation is.”

Downing, who is also a marijuana caregiver, clicks through charts that match the reasons patients use marijuana — relief from pain, depression, nausea and glaucoma, with compounds in the plant that are most likely to help.

He runs through the marijuana-infused products his students would be selling at a dispensary: tinctures, lip balm, bubble bath, salves and lotions.

“Topical applications are great for localized pain,” he said. “And they don’t get you high.”

This is one of 12 classes students must complete and pass tests on to receive a certificate from NIC. It’s a for-profit training center with two classrooms in an office park. The course costs $1,500 and covers growing marijuana, legal, business, science and regulatory issues.

“This industry’s coming, and we need to be ready to train the workers,” said NIC events coordinator Chris Foye. “That’s what we’re going to do.”

NIC opened this fall. So far, 14 students have graduated and 70 more are enrolled. There’s one other classroom program in Massachusetts. The New England Grass Roots Institute says its classes are for person enrichment, not professional training. Foye says NIC is filling a demand from dispensary owners who will be required to pay $500 to register each employee yearly with the state.

“They’ve already been spending millions of dollars on the application process to open this dispensary,” he said. “They don’t have time to be messing around with people that, you know, just want to smoke weed. This is serious. And that’s what this school is establishing: that it’s serious.”

Students at NIC must have a high school diploma or GED. Founder Mickey Martin said he’s applied for a state occupational school license and expects to receive it soon. Martin wrote much of the curriculum NIC uses, with input from business owners and others in states with an established legal marijuana industry, and with material from his book, “Medical Marijuana 101.”

NIC and other such training programs around the country are deciding, on their own, what it means to train and certify a marijuana dispensary employee. State regulations require eight hours of training a year that includes instruction on patient confidentiality rules. But the state does not say anything more about what the people who will advise patients should know, and there are no national standards.

“That is something that we’d like to see developing in the industry,” said Taylor West, deputy director with the industry trade group National Cannabis Industry Association. “We’re just in the early days on that right now, but I think it’s a direction you’ll start to see people moving in.”

While dispensary owners figure out what kind of training employees need, the industry is growing fast, and students at NIC are anxious to jump in.

“We have so many states that are legalizing it, so I see it taking a huge step forward and getting a lot of potential behind it. I see it becoming a really big thing,” said Michael Wunderlich, a 21-year-old car mechanic from Methuen who wants to become a master grower.

When Wunderlich tells family and friends about his planned career change, he said he hears “mixed emotions about it.”

“Older people, they don’t really understand it,” he said. “They’re still in that Reefer Madness thing. But a lot of people my age, they think it’s really cool.”

At NIC, the future dispensary workers cover a lot of material about marijuana and its potential benefits for patients in a short period of time. Downing ran through the basics of deciding how much marijuana to recommend for each patient.

“The standard for THC [one of the cannabinoids in marijuana] is 25 milligrams per dose,” Downing said. “It won’t get you high but will help to stimulate your appetite, will take the edge off your pain, calm your nerves, do the things we’re concerned about with medical cannabis.”

He told students that some patients will need more.

“The doses required for curative cancer are much higher than standard recreational doses,” Downing said.

There is no established medical research that shows marijuana can cure cancer. Advice on setting doses differs.

Dispensary workers will have to adjust doses based on the way a patient ingests marijuana and the strain they use. Dispensaries are required to test the marijuana they sell, but this too is an evolving practice.

Dispensary workers will grow and sell dozens of different strains of marijuana. Downing runs through a brief history of some common types: OG Kush, Dairy Queen, Blue Dream, Cheese and Sour Diesel. He suggests a couple of websites where students can get more information about the characteristics and benefits of each.

Some dispensaries will have a physician employees can consult before advising patients about which strain and what dose of marijuana to try. But Dr. Richard Pieters, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, says the training does not seem adequate.

“These people that are being trained need to understand the drugs that are being used for those conditions and the interaction of this agent with those drugs,” Pieters said. “That will require substantially more than 48 hours of training in my opinion.”

What is or isn’t the right amount of training and what that training should include is a matter of opinion as medical marijuana dispensaries prepare to open in Massachusetts. Growing and using marijuana is nothing new, but operating in a legal market is, in Massachusetts.

“People have been doing this for years,” NIC’s Foye said. “People are professionals in a black market industry, and we’re trying to get over that part of it.”

In the end, the most important training may be among patients, who will navigate between the worlds of standard medicine and the new option of marijuana.

Heriberto Flores Says He’s Satisfied With Outcome Of State Audit

The head of the New England Farm Workers Council is satisfied with the state’s decision on an audit which had alleged the organization misused $700,000 of state funds.

The Council won’t have to pay back any money to the state, according to CEO, Heriberto Flores. The audit also questioned the make up of the organization’s board of directors. Flores says more people outside the agency have been brought on. The audit also said Flores’ salary, calculated at $900,000 over three years, exceeded state limits. Flores says his salary is actually $290,000 a year, and comes from private funds. He says it’s justified. The council provides job training and other services to low-income residents.

According to the state, the audit was a key reason that a separate company also headed by Flores was denied a license in June for a Holyoke medical marijuana dispensary. Flores says he is “in discussions” with the Department of Public Health about that decision.

“Once mature people sit down and discuss the whole thing, and look at it in a more clear and objective way, everything will be solved,” says Flores.

Flores added his work at the Farm Worker’s Council would have no bearing on his dispensary.

A DPH spokesperson says the June decision was the agency’s final action on the medical marijuana license.

Marijuana Dispensary In License Limbo After Director’s Resignation

Plans for marijuana dispensaries in Northampton and Brookline remain in limbo, even after the resignation of the head of the company that had been pegged to run them.

Kevin Fisher resigned as director of New England Treatment Access over the weekend, after the Boston Globe reported he did not have a college degree, as he had claimed on his state application. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health — which had put the company’s dispensary license on hold — says it is reviewing the management change before deciding how to proceed. Northampton City Council President Bill Dwight says the state’s process has been frustrating to Western Massachusetts patients seeking medical marijuana.

“What I hope that the state’s priority will be, will be to quickly rectify this issue and license a dispensary — I mean, my preference would be in Northampton, but more importantly, in this part of the state,” Dwight says.

The next closest marijuana dispensary approved by the state is 80 miles away in Milford. FOR NEW ENGLAND PUBLIC RADIO, I’M KAREN BROWN.

Northampton Marijuana Dispensary On Hold

The state of Massachusetts is re-thinking a license application for a medical marijuana dispensary in Northampton, after reports that the applicant may have lied about his credentials.

New England Treatment Access had received provisional approval for medical marijuana dispensaries in Northampton and Brookline. The Northampton site, near I-91, was the only one approved west of Worcester.

But earlier this week, the Boston Globe reported that while the company’s director, Kevin Fisher, had claimed to have graduated from Youngstown State University, the college had no record of him finishing a degree.

Governor Deval Patrick’s spokesperson Alec Loftus says that Patrick considers lying on an application to be a “nonstarter,” but Loftus adds the state is still investigating Fisher’s case, and that none of the dispensaries in the state have yet been granted final licenses.

Kevin Fisher, who also runs a marijuana business in Colorado, declined to comment on the controversy. Last week, on a tour of the Northampton site, Fisher said he’d started planning the marijuana strains and prices for his Massachusetts stores.

Colleges Stick with Federal Ban on Medical Marijuana

Although medical marijuana is now legal in Massachusetts and other states, most college students this fall won’t be allowed to use their prescriptions on campus.

Many college campuses are caught between state and federal drug policy. In Massachusetts, for instance, the state now permits marijuana use for medical reasons, but the federal government does not. Since many colleges rely on federal funding, they have decided to stick with the federal drug ban so as not to risk that source of money. Most college spokespeople were reticent to get into details, other than to point out the rules. UMass Amherst spokesperson Patrick Callahan says students caught with medical marijuana on campus would be disciplined.

“It would be a violation of the student code of conduct,” Callahan says.

Chris Yurko of Holyoke Community College says the school does not make a distinction between recreational and medical marijuana.

“And as of now,” Yurko says, ” it’s not under review or in consideration for amending, the policy that forbids marijuana on campus.”

Several other Western Massachusetts colleges, including Hampshire, Smith, and Williams, also confirmed bans against medical marijuana. An Amherst college spokesperson says all smoking is banned on campus, but students with prescriptions for medical marijuana are allowed to live off campus. A Mount Holyoke representative says that school is still working out its policy.

Betty Aldworth of the national group, ‘Students for a Sensible Drug Policy,’ says schools that ban legal marijuana are being overly cautious — to the harm of students.

“People who are using medical marijuana are doing so because they are oftentimes replacing other drugs, other pharmaceutical drugs in their life,” she says, “and we don’t ban the use of those pharmaceutical drugs on campus.”

Aldworth says she knows of no college that has lost federal funding over medical marijuana. Calls to the U.S. Department of Education were not returned.