New Hampshire Opens First MMJ Dispensary | Stoner News
The east coast is much further behind on the cannabis legalization front than the west. There are no states on the east coast that have legalized the plant and some are just being plain stubborn. Take for example, New Hampshire. This small north eastern state legalized the use of medical marijuana nearly three years ago and now, in 2016, the first one has finally opened in Plymouth. Sanctuary ATC is one of only three companies that have been selected to run dispensaries in the Granite State. The other shops include Temescal Wellness (which will be opening in Dover and Lebanon this spring) and Prime ATC, scheduled to open this summer in Merrimack.
Patients are tired of waiting for their medical cannabis in the state of New Hampshire. As opiate addiction and overdose deaths soar, people are terrified to use the traditional painkillers that are given out at the doctors. Many are beginning to look towards cannabis as an alternative treatment. While Sanctuary ATC is the only dispensary allowed to be open to the public right now, Temescal and Prime ATC hope to be open and running by the summer, if not sooner.
At the end of April, there were 613 patients and 39 caregivers that had been approved for New Hampshire’s medical marijuana program, according to the state. There were over 800 people that applied for the program and only three patients have been denied. The rest of the applications were incomplete as submitted but the state has been trying to notify those who have incomplete applications in order to get them in to the program by filling the forms out correctly. Patients as of right now can only register to one dispensary but the numbers for each location seem good; 147 people have signed up for Sanctuary ATC’s location, 136 with Prime ATC in Merrimack, and a combined 170 for the two Temescal Wellness locations. These totals also don’t include people who have been approved but still do not have a physical card for the program.
Even though the small state of New Hampshire has taken a while to get the ball rolling on the medical marijuana program, they will hopefully be able to implement a stable program that will assist in getting their heroin epidemic under control. For such a small area, New Hampshire has some of the highest overdose rates due to opiates in the country. While the state pays to build liquor stores on the highway, patients are struggling to cope with their chronic pain while avoiding painkillers and other patients are dying, like Linda Horan, who sued New Hampshire in order to get her medical marijuana in Maine, since the state took so long to implement the dispensary program. Now that the first shop is open, patients in the Granite State finally have safe medicine to look forward to in the coming months.
