Marijuana Business Magazine

MARKET AT A GLANCE Main measure Senate Bill 710 Year passed 2005 (Senate and House passed measure, governor vetoed it and then Senate and House overrode the veto in 2006.) Cannabis business regulations Moderate. The state's rules governing Rhode Island’s three vertically integrated dispensa- ries are far less extensive and detailed than those in other MMJ programs. But emergency rules put in place to allow stand-alone cultivation operations are much more detailed. They govern nearly all aspects of business operations, including location, security, inventory tracking and testing. Patient registry Mandatory. Patients must have a written recommendation from a physician licensed in Rhode Island, Massachusetts or Connecticut Sampling of state medical marijuana licensing fees Application Dispensaries - $250 Cultivators - $5,000 What to watch Eight years after its creation, a legislative committee tasked with overseeing Rhode Island’s MMJ program met for the first time in March 2017, spurred into action by media reports raising concerns about the state's loose approach toward regulation. It remains to be seen what, if any, actions the committee might take regarding MMJ regulation. A call by Rhode Island’s governor to double the number of medical cannabis dispensaries in the state from three to six did not make it into the most recent budget. But pressure is mounting on lawmakers to increase patient access to MMJ. Data provided by the state Department of Business Regulation show Rhode Island has the highest number of patients per allowed number of dispensaries of any state. Rhode ¬sland Although Rhode Island’s medical marijuana program has been around for more than a decade, it continues to grow and change. Driven by concerns that caregivers were producing excess canna- bis that was making its way to the black market, regulators issued emergency rules in late 2016 that created licenses for a new type of stand-alone MMJ cultivator that can sell to the state’s three verti- cally integrated dispensaries. Since regulators began issuing the new licenses at the start of 2017, the number of caregivers in the state was down 6% through June versus a year earlier. Meanwhile, patient counts surpassed 18,000, an 11% increase over the same period. License Dispensaries - $5,000 (valid for two years) Cultivators - $20,000-$80,000 depending on size (renewed annually) November / December 2017 • Marijuana Business Magazine • 185

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