Medical marijuana dispensaries in Connecticut are about to welcome their first customers, even though the businesses won’t have any cannabis available for sale until later this year.
Several of the six state-licensed MMJ centers expect to open their doors in the next few weeks to begin processing patients via intake visits.
Under Connecticut’s medical marijuana law – one of the strictest in the country – patients must receive certification from their doctor and then meet with a pharmacist working at a dispensary to discuss the appropriate cannabis regimen.
Only then can they actually buy medical marijuana.
“Each patient will come in for about 30 minutes where the pharmacist will go over the patient’s existing medication regimen, counsel them somewhat,” Tom Nicholas, who heads the dispensary Prime Wellness of Connecticut, told the TV station WFSB.
Dispensaries in Connecticut hope to actually begin selling medical marijuana to customers in the late summer or early fall. Four cultivation centers were granted licenses earlier in the year and are now producing cannabis for the dispensaries.
More than 3,000 patients were registered with the program as of June. At that level, annual cannabis sales could come in between $5 million and $7 million, according to Marijuana Business Daily’s estimates.
