Complaints about the creaking wheels of government rolling along too slowly are commonplace, and usually deserved. This time, where it concerns the state’s fledgling medical marijuana industry, taking sufficient time to do the job right is essential.
The eight groups that were issued medical marijuana dispensary licenses are still waiting for the go-ahead to start their businesses, three months after the July 15 statutory start date has passed.
State Department of Health officials reported to a legislative oversight committee last week that the extra time is needed to finalize arrangements for a “seed-to-sale” tracking system.
The software vendor BioTrackTHC, a Florida company, was tapped to install the tracking system but the contract isn’t yet inked, largely due to complications of integration with an existing department database.
The licensees are certainly frustrated, especially given that the department cannot yet give a projected date that the system would be ready or when dispensaries could start cultivating.
And the complaints have been coming in from the potential buyers of the drug as well, those who hold the required medical marijuana certificates.
One who wrote to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser pointed out that the tracking systems have been in existence for some time, and that “integrating them into any other existing programs shouldn’t take this long, either.”
It would be nice if that were true. Unfortunately, very few such assumptions can be made where information technology upgrades and compatibility with existing systems are concerned. Hawaii is notoriously behind the eight ball on IT infrastructure.
And the system will be crucial. The tracking system will register and follow plants as they are grown, processed and sold to guard against illegal use of the marijuana.
The new software must interface with an existing patient registry system to prevent dispensaries from exceeding the cap on the amount to be sold to each patients: 8 ounces monthly. Unless the systems are coordinated, patients could shop at multiple dispensaries and get around that restriction.
If that safeguard isn’t in place at the start, it will be all but impossible to provide the assurance of legality to the public.
Hawaii was on the vanguard of legalizing medical marijuana, passing the original law 16 years ago. However, until last year there was no provision for the patients to obtain the drug, other than by growing it themselves.
Last year, lawmakers passed Act 241, clearing the way for the issuances of eight licenses for a total of 16 medical marijuana dispensaries.
At least one dispensary, Maui Wellness Group, reports it’s ready to start cultivating plants and has hired a dozen employees and has leased agricultural land and a retail facility. Those are expenses it can’t readily recoup, because cultivation takes at least three or four months, and now the company won’t meet its goal of starting sales by year’s end.
Maui state Sen. Roz Baker wants to keep bureaucracy at bay: “You don’t necessarily have to wait for everything until you get started” with cultivation, said Baker.
Of course, the Health Department must work to keep delays to a minimum. Critics are right that the lag in start-up on the production end also has delayed the development of product safety laboratories. And patients have a legitimate complaint about waiting for a workable dispensary network to be established.
But it’s better that they wait a bit longer than that the state builds a shoddy foundation for a new industry: The tracking system does need to be in place before any green lights flash.
The stance taken by the department, expressed by spokeswoman Janice Okubo, is the right one: “It is a huge responsibility and it’s not something we’re going to take lightly or rush through.”
