The Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDHO) recently announced its initiative to allow residents to apply for medical cannabis card registration online. The Rhode Island Cannabis Licensing Portal went live as of June 1, which covers a basic foundation for new and existing patients.

“The new system, known as the Rhode Island Cannabis Licensing Portal, lets existing card holders renew registrations, update personal information, and make necessary changes to their existing registration cards,” the press release states. “New patients applying for a medical marijuana registration card will now apply through the Cannabis Licensing Portal as well.”

A press release announced the launch of the program on June 1 and specified that the previous system was “entirely paper-based.” Now applications can be approved or denied within 35 days of submitting an application.

As the new system rolls out, the press release adds that they will eventually phase out mail-based notifications, but did not provide an end date. “RIDOH will stop mailing registration reminders and renewal forms in the coming months,” the announcement explained. “It is very important that patients create an account in the portal to be sure they get important messages and updates from RIDOH, including renewal reminders 60 days before the expiration date.”

Rhode Island’s medical cannabis program was enacted in 2006, according to a breakdown by Americans for Safe Access. At the time, patients were legally allowed to possess up to 2.5 ounces of cannabis, could cultivate up to 12 plants at home, and could appoint two caregivers, and only eight medical conditions qualified for medical cannabis. The state did not establish a foundation for medical dispensary access for almost seven years. In 2011, former Gov. Lincoln Chafee suspended licensing for compassion centers, but licensing resumed in 2012, and compassion centers began to open by 2013. After that, state officials helped expand the list of qualifying conditions and slowly began to roll out new rules.

The state’s recreational cannabis sales began much more recently, in December 2022. During the first week, with only five retailers operating at the time, the industry collected $1.6 million in sales. The total is broken up into recreational sales ($786,000) and medical cannabis ($845,400). Between February and March, the state collected $8.7 million in total sales, with a split of $3.3 million in medical cannabis sales and $5.3 million in recreational cannabis sales.

In December 2022, the medical cannabis patient count sat at 15,062, but has declined slightly following recreational cannabis legalization. In January 2023, there were 14,590 registered patients, followed by a slight increase of 14,673 in February, and then a decrease to 13,691 in March.

In a statement from Gov. Dan McKee, who signed the recreational cannabis bill earlier that year in May, he praised the potential of Rhode Island’s expansion into recreational cannabis. “This bill successfully incorporates our priorities of making sure cannabis legalization is equitable, controlled, and safe,” said McKee. “In addition, it creates a process for the automatic expungement of past cannabis convictions. My Administration’s original legalization plan also included such a provision and I am thrilled that the Assembly recognized the importance of this particular issue. The end result is a win for our state both socially and economically.”

Most recently, McKee nominated three individuals in May to take part in a regulatory panel that “will oversee the regulation, licensing and control of adult use and medical cannabis in the Ocean State.” McKee’s appointed chair of the panel, Kimberly Ahern, expressed her hope to continue the “good work” that has been accomplished by regulators so far in her state. “The first six months of adult-use have demonstrated our state’s success in carefully expanding into this new industry,” Ahern said. “I look forward to working with my fellow Commissioners to regulate cannabis in a manner that is safe, transparent and equitable in the years going forward.”

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Texas is now accepting applications as it looks to increase the number of licensed medical cannabis dispensaries, a state agency announced on Monday.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said that it is now taking applications for the so-called Compassionate Use Program (CUP), which was established by the 2015 law that legalized medical marijuana treatment in the state. 

The department said that the application period will close on April 28, and that applicants who have previously applied may reapply. 

“An announcement detailing the process for application acceptance and the subsequent approval process to issue additional licenses will be made at a later date. The department will issue only the number of licenses necessary to ensure reasonable statewide access to, and the availability of, low-THC cannabis for patients registered in the compassionate-use registry,” the Department of Public Safety said in the announcement on Monday.

Those additional licenses are needed in Texas, where the medical cannabis program has been encumbered by legal obstacles. 

According to the Dallas Morning News, only “three dispensaries have been licensed in Texas in the past three years.”

The law that was passed in 2015, the newspaper said, “was highly restrictive in the conditions it covered and how much THC, the element that gives marijuana users a high, was allowed.”

“The Legislature expanded the list of conditions that could be treated under the Compassionate Use Program a few years later. But even then, some advocates believe the program is too selective of the conditions that are allowed and are hoping the Legislature will pass expansion legislation this year,” the Dallas Morning News reported.

“The three dispensaries now open are all in central Texas, with two in Austin and one in Schulenberg, about 100 miles west of San Antonio. With only three dispensaries that can provide cannabidiol that is low in THC, some advocates are frustrated that there is not enough supply to meet demand,” the Morning News continued.

In 2021, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law that made patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and all types of cancer eligible for the Compassionate Use Program, and also raised the cap on THC from .5 percent to one percent by dry weight.

Advocates lamented that the bill was still too restrictive; for example, an earlier version of the legislation would have raised the THC cap to five percent. 

Republican state Sen. Charles Schwertner, however, introduced a replacement measure that capped the limit at one percent.

““As a pharmacist and as a physician, I feel strongly that our limited medical program, with appropriate rules and oversight, is the right path for patients in Texas seeking symptom relief,” Schwertner said at the time. “I believe the evidence is starting to show that. I believe there needs to be further work, but certainly, the testimony is very strong by patients who are suffering from some of these conditions.”

Recreational cannabis remains illegal in the Lone Star State, although there is reason to believe that Texans are ready to embrace legalization.

A poll released last summer found that a 55% of registered voters in Texas support the legalization of cannabis for adults, while 35% said they were opposed.

Abbott, however, is not yet on board with legalization.

A Republican who won re-election last year, Abbott “has previously expressed interest in reducing the criminal penalty for marijuana possession to a Class C misdemeanor, but not legalizing the drug,” according to the Houston Chronicle.

Following President Joe Biden’s pardon of federal marijuana offenders last year, a spokesperson for Abbott said that the governor would not be following the White House’s lead.

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The new medical cannabis program in Mississippi opened up to applicants last week, four months after the state’s Republican governor signed the measure into law.

Beginning last Wednesday, qualifying patients in the state may submit applications to obtain a medical cannabis card.

According to local television station WLOX, “licensing for medical cannabis dispensaries only will begin July 1 through the state Department of Revenue.”

Via the state’s Department of Health, the following conditions may qualify a patient for participation in the program: cancer; Parkinson’s disease; Huntington’s disease; muscular dystrophy; glaucoma; spastic quadriplegia; positive status for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV); acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS); hepatitis; amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS); Crohn’s disease; ulcerative colitis; sickle-cell anemia; Alzheimer’s disease; agitation of dementia; post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); autism; pain refractory to appropriate opioid management; diabetic/peripheral neuropathy; and spinal cord disease or severe injury.

In addition, a patient may qualify if they have “a chronic terminal or debilitating disease or medical condition or its treatment that produces one or more of the following”: cachexia or wasting syndrome; chronic pain; severe or intractable nausea; seizures; and severe and persistent muscle spasms including, but not limited to, those characteristic of multiple sclerosis.

The law is the result of a 2020 ballot initiative that was approved by Mississippi voters, but that vote proved to be only a prelude to what has been a messy road to implementation. Last year, the state’s Supreme Court struck down the ballot initiative, saying it violated the state’s constitution.

That set the stage for Mississippi lawmakers to write their own medical cannabis program.

In late January, after more than a year of disagreements on the finer details of the law, members of the state Senate and House of Representatives finally produced a compromise bill that was sent to the desk of GOP Gov. Tate Reeves.

Throughout the process, Reeves had expressed his preference that purchasing limits for medical cannabis patients be set to 2.7 grams a day. The bill approved by lawmakers in January, however, allows patients to purchase as many as 3.5 grams up to six days a week.

It passed with a veto-proof majority, forcing the hand of Reeves, who signed the bill into law in February.

“The ‘medical marijuana bill’ has consumed an enormous amount of space on the front pages of the legacy media outlets across Mississippi over the last three-plus years,” Reeves said in a statement after signing the measure.

“There is no doubt that there are individuals in our state who could do significantly better if they had access to medically prescribed doses of cannabis. There are also those who really want a recreational marijuana program that could lead to more people smoking and less people working, with all of the societal and family ills that that brings,” he continued.

Reeves added that he had “made it clear that the bill on my desk is not the one that I would have written.”

“But it is a fact that the legislators who wrote the final version of the bill (the 45th or 46th draft) made significant improvements to get us towards accomplishing the ultimate goal,” the governor said.

Reeves did, however, note certain aspects of the bill of which he did approve, including a rule that a “medical professional can only prescribe within the scope of his/her practice,” that the physician must “have to have a relationship with the patient,” and that a prescription requires “an in-person visit by the patient to the medical professional.”

“I thank all of the legislators for their efforts on these improvements and all of their hard work. I am most grateful to all of you: Mississippians who made your voice heard,” Reeves said at the time. “Now, hopefully, we can put this issue behind us and move on to other pressing matters facing our state.”

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Felons will no longer be automatically barred from getting a cannabis license in Washington State, beginning next Saturday on October 2. Several updates to the rule now allow some people with serious felonies to obtain cannabis licenses, on a case-by-case basis.

That’s thanks to a new rule set by the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board that will go into effect shortly. Anyone who obtains a license must first pass an obligatory background check, but now, a felony on a record won’t necessarily be an automatic disqualifier.

Serious felony convictions within the past 10 years, however, will still trigger deeper scrutiny of a person’s application. But the rules no longer bar people with felonies from receiving a license. 

The protocol for less serious felonies also was updated. Specifically, one Class C felony on a record won’t automatically bar their license application. In addition, if someone has fewer than three misdemeanor convictions in the past three years, that won’t be enough to prompt a deeper review. 

Failure to report an old misdemeanor from juvenile court won’t count against applicants anymore, either.

With a strong focus on social equity in recent years, the rule change is being celebrated by cannabis business people because it allows people who were arrested at disproportionate rates to enter the legal industry.

“I think it’s great what the state is doing in terms of allowing people who have issues in the past, to be able to qualify,” Tran Du, co-owner of Shawn Kemp’s Cannabis in Seattle, told KOMO News.

The idea behind the rule change is that people who were arrested at disproportionate rates for cannabis shouldn’t be barred from participating in the industry, now that it’s legal.

“We wanted to bring parity in the disproportionality that we saw from the leftover of the war on drugs and that Black people were being arrested and brown people were being arrested disproportionately,” said Representative Melanie Morgan (D-Parkland) who is also chair of the state Social Equity on Cannabis Task Force.

Morgan stressed the need to get the state’s priorities in line. “The bottom line is bringing parity to the industry and making sure that Black and brown people have equal access to this industry in ownership,” she said.

Why Allow Felons?

Disparities in arrest rates of people of color are evident in numerous states, and Washington state is no different.

A study conducted by the Marijuana Arrest Research Project, entitled “240,000 Marijuana Arrests Costs, Consequences, and Racial Disparities of Possession Arrests in Washington, 1986‐2010,” found that although African Americans and Latinx people consume marijuana at lower rates than whites, African Americans were arrested for marijuana crimes at 2.9 times the rate of whites in the state. Latinos were arrested at 1.6 times the rate of whites.

The burden of a felony can prevent some people from participating in the cannabis industry. As an example, High Times highlighted the case of Katree Darriel Saunders, who was barred from Nevada’s industry over a pot charge. As a one-time employee in the Nevada medical space, served four months in federal prison over a probation violation after choosing cannabis over opioids to treat trauma and injuries. That choice has burdened Saunders for over a decade, largely preventing her from participating in the industry despite years of experience, success and an otherwise spotless record. 

Other routes into the cannabis industry are available, depending on what state you live in. Several states that have legalized marijuana also offer opportunities for convicts to expunge their records.

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