New Zealand health regulators last week began allowing the use of domestically produced medicinal cannabis products, ending patients’ reliance on imported medical marijuana products. The Ministry of Health allowed access to local medicines beginning on September 9, opening a new opportunity for New Zealand cannabis growers and manufacturers.

Under New Zealand’s medicinal cannabis legalization laws, any licensed general physician can prescribe cannabis medications to any patient to treat any health condition. But since 2017, only imported cannabis medicines have been approved for use by patients, notes Tim Aldridge, managing director of cannabis grower Puro New Zealand.

“Up until now, New Zealand patients could only be prescribed medicinal cannabis grown overseas, with the vast majority being imported from Australia and Canada,” Aldridge said in a statement.

Puro New Zealand grows organically produced cannabis at its outdoor facility on the nation’s South Island. Earlier this year, the company signed a multi-million dollar, five-year deal to provide cannabis to Helius Therapeutics, a firm that manufactures cannabinoid medications at its facility in East Auckland. Carmen Doran, chief executive of Helius, noted that a change in the law now allows New Zealand patients access to the company’s products.

“In 2018, Parliament’s legislative intent around improving access and affordability was clear,” said Doran. “The subsequent Medicinal Cannabis Scheme has also strived for both locally grown and made cannabis medicines. That national ambition to better serve long-suffering Kiwi patients is finally a reality and that’s exciting.”

“This is great news for many patients who have long sought legal access to both New Zealand-grown and made medicinal cannabis products,” Doran added.

Medications Approved for Local Market

On Tuesday, Helius was notified by the Ministry of Health that two of its medications had passed quality standards tests, a requirement that must be met before cannabis products can enter the local market under regulations adopted in 2019. New Zealand already has 35 cannabis companies across the country, with Helius Therapeutics being the largest in the nation.

Helius was New Zealand’s first medicinal cannabis business to achieve a GMP Licence for Manufacturing Medicines in July 2021, bringing the first products to market three months later. The new products will first be launched in New Zealand before being rolled out internationally, with Europe and South America already identified as priority foreign markets for the company.

“Gaining approval of medicinal cannabis products that are truly New Zealand-grown and made is a significant milestone for our industry,” Doran said. “Local patients and their advocates have fought long and hard for truly Kiwi products which are both high quality and cost-effective.”

Aldridge said that his company has spent four years bringing its operations up to government standards.

“It hasn’t always been plain sailing,” Aldridge said. “Navigating this new industry, coming to grips with the regulatory regime, and growing a new crop at scale has been a massive undertaking.”

Although the work to develop a local cannabis production infrastructure has not been easy, he says that patients will soon reap the rewards. Locally produced cannabis medications are expected to cost patients half as much as imported medicines.

Doran of Helius said that a local source of CBD and other cannabis products will help ensure that patients in New Zealand have access to their medicines, noting that global logistical challenges over the past two years have affected imports of cannabis products from producers abroad.

“We have seen significant delays and disruptions in the availability of imported products as COVID continues to impact supply chains,” said Doran. “It is disconcerting for patients and prescribers when products that are making a difference in people’s lives are not available. Fully New Zealand-grown and made products will help alleviate such issues.”

The post New Zealand Approves Domestic Medical Cannabis Products appeared first on High Times.

The post New Zealand Approves Domestic Medical Cannabis Products appeared first on Paradise Found.

The state of Maine is determined to preserve its requirement that cannabis businesses be owned by its own residents, bringing the dispute into uncharted legal territory.

First, some background. Officials in the Pine Tree State “originally required all medical and recreational cannabis businesses to be owned by residents,” as the Portland Press Herald explained in an article. 

But that requirement was challenged last year by Wellness Connection of Maine, the state’s largest chain of medical cannabis dispensaries that had sought a license for a recreational cannabis dispensary in Portland, the capital city of Maine.

Wellness Connection, which is owned by a Delaware-based LLC, filed a lawsuit against the city of Portland after council members there approved an ordinance capping the number of licenses for adult pot use dispensaries and establishing a system that gave preferential treatment to local applications.

Matt Warner, an attorney for Wellness Connection, argued that the requirement was unconstitutional, saying that as “a matter of constitutional law, states and cities can’t discriminate against citizens of other states based purely on residency.”

“More than 25 percent of the points awarded through Portland’s competitive licensing process are based on residency, so we’re automatically disqualified for those points, based purely on our owner being from Delaware,” Warner said at the time.

The company argued in its filing that limiting “the opportunities for (Wellness Connection) to create a brand, build a reputation and establish customer loyalty in Portland at the adult-use market’s inception would harm them in ways that cannot be reduced to a monetary damages award.”

The state stood down, eventually doing away with the requirement for recreational cannabis businesses, and in August, a federal court sided with Wellness Connection in a ruling that overturned the in-state residency requirement for medical marijuana dispensaries. 

That decision, from U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Torresen, has set the stage for the latest round in the dispute between the state and Wellness Connection, with Maine seeking to uphold its requirement that medical dispensaries be owned by residents.

The Press Herald reported that it “appears the case is the first of its kind to reach a federal appeals court, where the opinion could have ramifications in other states,” with the central question hovering over “whether the residency rule violates the U.S. Constitution by restricting interstate commerce.”

In her ruling back in August, Torresen said that the “notion that the medical marijuana industry in Maine is wholly intrastate does not square with reality.”

“I recognize that none of the courts that have confronted this specific constitutional issue have rendered final judgments, and it also seems that no circuit court has addressed it,” the judge wrote, as quoted by the Press Herald.

“But given the Supreme Court’s and First Circuit’s unmistakable antagonism towards state laws that explicitly discriminate against nonresident economic actors, I conclude that the Dispensary Residency Requirement violates the dormant Commerce Clause.”

The appeal has been filed by both the state of Maine and a nonprofit industry group called the Maine Cannabis Coalition, which is in favor of the residency requirement.

In briefs filed in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the state says that “the dormant Commerce Clause does not apply to Maine’s intrastate market for medical marijuana.”

“Nor do the residency requirements in the Maine Medical Use of Marijuana Act burden interstate commerce more severely than Congress, because Congress has already eliminated that market,” the brief said, as quoted by the Press Herald. “Because striking down Maine’s residency requirements at issue in this case would do nothing to expand legal interstate commerce in the United States, they should stand.”

The post Maine Aims to Disallow Out-of-town Cannabis Business Owners appeared first on High Times.

The post Maine Aims to Disallow Out-of-town Cannabis Business Owners appeared first on Paradise Found.