ADHS medical marijuana rule making underway

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled this summer that the Arizona Department of Health Services’ requirement that medical marijuana Registration Certificate holders (dispensaries) must get an approval to operate within one year in order to renew their certificates, is unreasonable. Due to Judge Randall Warner’s ruling, ADHS Director, Will Humble, says the Department has begun the process of adjusting the regulations to be in accordance with the ruling.

According to Humble that process began by scoping out modifications to the rules for renewing dispensary certificates. “We’re also planning to make some modifications to the ’25-mile rule’ (measuring by road rather than ‘as the crow flies’),” Humble wrote on his blog, “eliminating the former ‘year 2’ selection criteria for dispensaries by focusing on vacant CHAAs rather than patient density, and removing the lifetime disqualification for those applicants that receive a dispensary registration certificate but don’t execute.”

Humble wrote that once the Department has “an initial ‘straw-man’ draft,” it will solicit public comment and hold oral proceedings.

“We think we’ll be able to work through the process and establish the modified rules by the Fall of 2014,” concluded Humble.