First medical-marijuana dispensary opens in Ocean State

A NEW LEAF: Thomas C. Slater Compassion Center CEO Gerald McGraw Jr. in the recently opened facility. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
A NEW LEAF: Thomas C. Slater Compassion Center CEO Gerald McGraw Jr. in the recently opened facility. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

The first medical-marijuana dispensary has opened in Rhode Island and likely will soon be followed by another, despite uncertain business prospects due to scaled-back plans following years of legal and legislative wrangling.
The Thomas C. Slater Compassion Center in Providence opened on April 19.
“Our first day was four years in the making,” said Chris Reilly, spokesman for the center. “There were a number of turns in the road. There was a great deal of interest among the patient community that we were finally able to provide a safe, acceptable place for people to get their medication.”
Rhode Island made medical marijuana legal in 2006. But since then there had been several delays, limitations and legal revisions that long frustrated owners of three approved dispensaries.
The state in 2011 selected the Thomas C. Slater Compassion Center, the Summit Medical Compassion Center in Warwick and the Greenleaf Compassion Center in Portsmouth to open.
In May 2012, however, the state shrunk the size of the centers in order to avoid attracting the attention of federal law enforcement and the owners of the then would-be centers weren’t happy, saying it would limit their ability to meet patient demand.
Rhode Island dispensaries are limited to holding no more than 99 mature marijuana plants at any time, or 150 plants total.
Those changes, the dispensary owners said at the time, would greatly shrink projected sales.
Before the allowable sizes were scaled back, for instance, the Thomas Slater center projected revenue of $3.6 million in three years and the Greenleaf Compassion Care Center, to be operated by acupuncturist Seth Bock, projected $1.2 million in revenue in three years. The Summit center originally projected $23.4 million in revenue, though that figure was flagged by the Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition as a bit high.
Reilly last week said there is no way yet to tell how economically viable the Thomas C. Slater center will be. Speaking only four days after it opened, he said there isn’t an established foot-traffic model yet. He said that 375 registered medical-marijuana patients, out of the state’s roughly 5,000, have identified the center as a caregiver location where they can purchase the medication.
It will be at least six months before any new revenue projections could be made, he said.
“I can’t give any idea of what it will be like from a business [standpoint],” Reilly said. “We’re really in the earliest stages of this operation.”
Rhode Island is the second New England state to allow operation of medical-marijuana dispensaries.
There were eight dispensaries operating in Maine at the end of 2012.
Kenneth Albert, director of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the dispensary licensing, said there is no quantified economic data on the centers’ revenue yet.
“I’m sure the state will benefit from income and sales tax,” Albert said.
Comparing possible revenue to other, larger states could be problematic for those assessing the potential economic benefit of the Rhode Island dispensaries.
For example, the Colorado Department of Revenue reported that the state’s dispensaries generated $199 million in sales and $5.4 million in state sales tax in 2012. But there are 107,666 registered medical-marijuana users in the state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 numbers.
The opening of Rhode Island’s first dispensary is a major step forward for those who have, for the last four years, been advocating for them.
“I think it’s great news that they’ve opened,” Bock said of the Slater compassion center. “They have put in tremendous effort, and I think they’ve done a fantastic job. It’s a slow-growth model [economically], which I think is the best way.”
Bock expects his Greenleaf center to be opened before the end of May but there is still a little construction to complete on site. Dara Chadwick, spokesperson for the R.I. Department of Health, which oversees licensing for the compassion centers, said Bock has filed his application and paid his fee.
“Basically, they will let us know when they are ready for inspection,” Chadwick said.
Chadwick said she has not yet received an application from the Summit Compassion Center.
Terry Fracassa, an attorney with Fracassa Law & Consulting LLC, who is representing the Summit center, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
It also is not yet known how the R.I. Department of Health’s August 2012 decision to bar registered nurse practitioners and physician assistants from signing medical-marijuana certification forms, which they had been authorized do since 2006, will affect dispensary business.
The Rhode Island Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in October 2012 filed a lawsuit against DOH on the grounds that the department changed its policy in violation of the state’s Administrative Procedure Act, because there was no time period for public comment or a decision notice given.
The ACLU and others said they were concerned that patients who had been working with nurse practitioners or physician assistants as their primary caregivers will now have to develop a new medical relationship with a doctor to receive a medical-marijuana certification.
Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island ACLU, said briefings in the lawsuit were due at the end of April.
“To the extent that the current regulations make it more difficult to qualify, it will necessarily make it more difficult for those who should have access to marijuana to make use of the dispensaries,” he said.
Reilly said he is well aware that there could be even more legislative changes ahead regarding medical marijuana.
“[Right now] we’re very comfortable that our legislators and governor were deliberate in their work last year to allow us to be where we’re at right now,” he said. •

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