The U.S. Attorney for Arizona wrote me a letter today about how the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act and our rules interface with federal law. As you know, Arizona voters passed the Act last November and ADHS created a program to clearly carry out the voters’ wishes. While we've done what we can to set the stage for a medical [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
We had the second of four public hearings on the draft rules in Tempe on Tuesday afternoon. We got a lot of good input from folks and there were some good suggestions to improve the draft rule. The most valuable comments came from people that offered concrete ideas for ways we can improve the rule's [...]
Medical Marijuana Public Comments Posted We received more than 1,500 comments on our initial proposed rules to regulate medical marijuana. All the comments (over 1,000 pages) are posted on our http://www.azdhs.gov/prop203/ website for viewing. Our team is very busy reviewing the comments and suggestions looking for good ideas that will help build a more effective program. By [...]
So far, we’ve received well over 1,300 comments on the Informal Draft Rules that we posted December 17. Our first comment period ends today. We’ll be reviewing the comments and revising our initial draft over the next couple of weeks. We’ll be releasing new draft rules for public comment on Monday, January 31, kicking off our [...]
The AZ Medical Marijuana Act states that cities and towns may adopt "reasonable regulations" regarding the location and operations of medical marijuana dispensaries and growing operations in their jurisdictions. The ADHS still has the responsibility to issue the dispensary license- but any license that we ultimately issue would be contingent on the prospective facility being [...]
