Lobbyist wants to help local medical marijuana industry

Christopher Garth knows medical marijuana is positioned to become a very big business in Hawaii and that he’s in at the ground floor — at least figuratively. In reality, the Hawaii Dispensary Alliance, the fledgling trade association, is on the second floor of a suite of offices at Nuuanu and Hotel streets, and there are miles to go before any cash registers start registering the cash.

Garth is executive director and chief lobbyist of the alliance, which held its official launch party in the restored Chinatown building only a few months ago. It has set annual membership fees, ranging from $25 for patients to $2,500 for businesses providing support services to the industry. What the dispensaries themselves will pay is still to be determined.

At 35, his principal educational and work background is in public policy, having worked as a lobbyist and as an aide for former City Council Chairman Todd Apo.

The alliance provides advice to businesses wanting to enter the industry, but Garth is now dealing with the medical marijuana issue on a personal level as well. He frequently visited family in Hawaii but finally moved here from Colorado after college, where he was a snowboarding instructor and endured his share of injuries and lingering pain.

So Garth is getting his own medical- marijuana certificate and one for his father who, he said, is embarking on treatment for cancer.

There are still labs to be established to certify the products in the medical marijuana dispensaries, ensuring they are free of contaminants and contain consistent levels of cannabidol (the compound that brings the relief from pain and other symptoms) and tetrahydrocannabinol (the element that produces marijuana’s heady sensation).

But things are happening pretty fast, he said, projecting that most of the first eight dispensaries likely will be open by year’s end. And because federal laws preclude the transport of the product between states, he said, Hawaii has the chance to brand its own.

“We have the opportunity to do it on our own terms, in our own way,” he said, adding: “Hopefully, in the right way.”

QUESTION: Doesn’t the fact that the federal government treats marijuana as an illegal drug raise hurdles for this trade group?

ANSWER: It does, it does … while we recognize the federal hurdles, they’re kind of emblematic of starting off any new industry, really. Not to say that every new industry came out of what’s considered an illicit drug.

Q: Well, I guess alcohol did … ?

A: Alcohol’s one of them, yeah. And I don’t think it’s appropriate to draw too many parallels from alcohol.

Q: Because?

A: Alcohol hasn’t always been in the pharmacopeia. It hasn’t always been around as a service tool for all the ailments. There’s more damaging information that comes out about alcohol reports than there are for medical marijuana.

And to assume that marijuana, in a medical capacity or even as an adult recreational tool, is as harmful, even socially, as alcohol is — I don’t think they should be regulated in the same manner … at least not in the long run. Maybe initially.

But until the studies resume … the studies about the positive impacts or even the negative impacts of marijuana, either financially or socially or from a medicinal standpoint, it’s kind of hard to jump to conclusions about how it should be regulated.

So, right! Let’s consider that marijuana was on the pharmacopeia, America’s medicinal agenda or docket for about 100 years, until about 100 years ago. …

Q: About the alliance: It’s a membership organization?

A: We are. We’re a 501(c)6.

Q: Now, the 501(c)6 means that you can lobby?

A: It means that we can lobby, and that we’re member-based.

Q: How much does membership cost for the dispensaries?

A: The eight licensees are one component of our membership. As I said, we’re trying to build an industry, and it’s a patient-centered industry. We’re a patient-centered organization.

In establishing ourselves and recognizing that while from one perspective the dispensaries may be at the top tier, they’re trying to create and deliver medicine to the patients, right? The patient numbers are not as great as they could be. So we figure that we would empower the patient base. Let’s broaden the patient base.

Q: So part of your mission is to proselytize a bit?

A: In a sense, yeah. And in recognizing the disconnect, or at least the space between delivering and creating medicine at the top to the patients, there’s a whole lot of space in between there. And that’s an industry.

So there’s opportunity for ancillary programs, and ancillary services and vendors to get involved. Everything from white collar to blue collar to green collar.

And what I mean by that is, as a dispensary is coming online, they have to file paperwork. They have to have legal representation. They have to have government relations. They need to have CPAs. They need to have contractors … they have to have payroll and HR representatives, or at least systems involved.

They need to have, in some capacity, advertising and marketing. They need someone to run the numbers. They need risk assessment, risk management. They need insurance.

Then they need to build out the physical spaces of both the dispensary as a retail front and the grow-and-manufacture operations in the back end. They need computer programs to operate and manage those resources and faculties and those facilities. So, now we’re starting to get into the tech side.

You also need in this case, because energy is so wildly expensive over here, you need to incorporate energy management systems. And you need to incorporate alternative means of energy — from solar to wind, to whatever, to power your facility.

As we watch all of those different components and players come in, all of a sudden we have a very robust and widespread industry.

Ultimately, we need someone to paint the inside and to do the decor of the retail facilities. You don’t want to go into the dispensary and it to be some kind of shady hole in the wall. We’ve done so much to make our opportunities so much more grand than that. They should be clinical, they should be precise, they should be welcoming, they should be sterile, they should be clean, they should be, you know …

Q: Medical?

A: Medical. Exactly. …

Q: Your top-tier members, you said, have an opportunity to be on the board. That’s not a guarantee?

A: It’s not a guarantee. They have to be voted in by the membership.

Our board hasn’t yet been determined. When it comes to the dispensaries, we haven’t yet figured out what the buy-in for membership is. We need to figure out ultimately what the dispensaries want: what services they want, what services they feel are necessary from a trade association. …

Q: How is the industry going to handle the lack of standards on dosage? Is this all a work in progress?

A: It totally is. It’s all subjective to who you are and what you need out of medicine. Unfortunately, at this point there’s no one-size-fits-all, no cure-all.

There’s a lot of speculation as to whether or not marijuana in any form will actually ever be FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved.

Because there are so many different strains, so many different variations, so many different ways to imbibe. And they impact so many different conditions, afflictions or ailments that to FDA-track one strain in a single form for a particular ailment, that’s way too cost-intensive, perhaps.

At this point, it’s not a prescription; it’s just a certification. It’s a recommendation from a doctor that you qualify — evidence points to you being eligible for treatment.

Q: I didn’t realize the distinction between the prescription and a certification.

A: It’s a massive distinction. … That’s one of the issues. Our local doctors need to be aware that it’s not a prescription, it’s a certification, and that there is no criminal penalty that they can be involved in for providing these certifications. There’s no repercussion. …

Q: How will the dispensaries present the products with any assurance of quality control?

A: That’s the whole point of the dispensary program. It’s to ensure that there is quality, there is accountability and there is consistency.

We have labs that have to be certified by the Department of Health. And these labs are looking for heavy metals and contaminants and molds and whatever may be in the various products any of the dispensaries are putting out there. …

It’s an integral part to getting the products on the shelf.

Q: They’re looking for contaminants and bad stuff that shouldn’t be in there?

A: They’re also looking for potency as well, making sure that whatever it says is actually what it is.