Federal agency quashes Georgia's plan to let pharmacies sell medical marijuana
Federal agency quashes Georgia's plan to let pharmacies sell medical marijuana
Federal drug officials are warning Georgia to shelve its plans to be the first state to allow pharmacies to dispense medical marijuana.
Federal drug officials are warning Georgia to shelve its plans to be the first state to allow pharmacies to dispense medical marijuana products.
News outlets report that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on Nov. 27 warned pharmacies that dispensing medical marijuana violates federal law.
Yeah... we wouldn't want pharmacies to dispense something that- *checks notes*- has multiple medical benifits.
Wouldn't a pharmacy dispensing this interfere with companies who entire purpose is to do this? I remember reading an article that stated a massive amount of issues with this exact situation.
They sell beer at both walmart and walgreens
Adderal too
Not everything with medical benefits can be found in a pharmacy. For example, gamma ray emitters have medical benefits.
Even if we only consider substances, there are plenty of beneficial drugs that are never found in pharmacies, like propofol.
Fine, who would want Walgreens, Walmart and CVS to be where you get your weed? I would rather buy it at independent stores both for atmosphere and that large pharmacies are shitty companies in every way possible.
Because it's a prescription medication, just like any other. It's far more convenient to pick up prescription just like you do any other.
There will be far fewer dispensaries than pharmacies, so less choice, more driving, and worse hours.
Dispensaries vastly outnumber pharmacies in the towns I’ve lived in (Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico) and also have more convenient hours (Denver they’re 8 am - 10 pm). I also have doubts about the varieties they’d stock and the quality. Being prescribed cannabis in most states means you shop at regular stores and get a discount, or in non-rec states that you can go there at all - and they tend to have a tremendous variety. It’s not like being prescribed a pharmaceutical that comes in one brand and a generic pill like most prescriptions.
I’d also much rather talk to someone who understands cannabis and cannabinoids topics - RSO, CBD, edibles, dabbing and so forth - than a pharmacist. I would anticipate a pharmacy giving much worse overall service than a dispensary.
I agree with the other commenter here. I could see this going the other way for smaller towns or more rural areas, but where I am at right now there are 4 dispensaries and 2 pharmacies in a 5 mile radius.
It's also Sunday; one of those pharmacies is closed and the other one will close at 12 in the afternoon. As for the dispensaries, one of them will close at 5 and the others will close at 10 ~no different than any other day of the week.
Getting rid of dispensaries in favor of pharmacies here would benefit nobody except for the drug companies.
The nearest pharmacy is two miles away. The neareat dispensary is a half mile away. The 2nd nearest is across the street from that one.
There are more dispensaries than there are pharmacies, bars, and churches in my state.
I'd much much much rather pick my shit up at Wegmans while shopping for the rest of my shit. I couldn't give a fuck about atmosphere. I'm not there to have out and smoke out my dealer anymore.
I can already see it (again): an employee of Walgreens that is not a pharmacy employee gets tasked to help the pharmacy during a busy period. They are put at the counter to grab and distribute customers' ready prescriptions. A customer comes up to the counter to pick up their prescription of marijuana, the employee sees the prescribed drug, and promptly refuses to give the customer their prescription. It's already happened in southern states with birth control, it feel confident it would happen in this scenario, too.
There are independent pharmacies. Compounding pharmacies are even in many small towns. They tailor medications specifically to your needs. They would be perfect places for patients using cannabis medicinally to get pre-set dosages.
Those who oppose rapid legalization of marijuana said the DEA’s stance will protect consumers and allow time for more research.
Rapid? US legalization started like 28 years ago. Nothing about the process has been rapid.
Biden priorities
Who let you on the internet? Don't you have some books to burn somewhere?
Biden can't wave his magic wand and make weed legal. This, however, is happening:
Until it is seriously studied with results compared to alternatives (not always a placebo) it isn't medicine doesn't belong in a pharmacy. That applies to marijuana just as much as homeopathy (which also doesn't belong in a pharmacy but is there)
Yes I know studies are hard and expensive. I'm also aware of all the other problems of getting FDA approval for products that are not patentable. Those are issues worth fixing and we can debate sometime what a good fix might be. However the process still exists for good reason, calling anything medicine that doesn't follow the process is a lie.
CVS, Walgreens, etc. all sell alcohol. Walmart and Kroger, which have pharmacies, also sell cigarettes.
I'm not seeing the problem with weed as well.
Edit: Come to think of it, I can go to any of those locations today and get CBD products, making this even more ridiculous.
None of them are being recommended by a doctor and sold as medicine.
I smoke a zip a month. But the medical marijuana industry is just a front for recreational in most states. There are a few pain management and seizure studies that are fairly concrete and reproducible but the "it'll cure cancer shit" is mostly unstudied and not reproducible. What weed is currently prescribed for is far from passing any FDA regulations.
Better to drop the bullshit medical side, legalize it recreational, and start taking the medical side seriously instead of lead by norml.
The barrier to medical studies has been the Federal Government (DEA) for several decades. They're changing it but slowly.
Since 1968 the only place researchers could legally obtain cannabis for research was from a government lab in Mississippi, and as noted below, they wouldn't even give you any. Researchers who did obtain it noted it was often old, low potency, and generally low quality, making it not very useful.Linked DEA article:
On May 14, 2021, the Drug Enforcement Administration took an important step to increase opportunities for medical and scientific research. DEA is nearing the end of its review of certain marijuana grower applications, thereby allowing it to soon register additional entities authorized to produce marijuana for research purposes. Currently, the National Center for the Development of Natural Products at the University of Mississippi is the only approved supplier of marijuana for research purposes in the United States, and that production has been exclusively for the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
NPR notes:
Yet scientists still aren't allowed to simply use the cannabis sold at state-licensed dispensaries for their clinical research because cannabis remains illegal under federal law.
"We'll see a decade or more of explosive cannabis research and potential new therapies," says Dr. Steve Groff, founder and chairman of Groff North America, one of three companies that has publicly announced it has preliminary approval from the federal government to cultivate cannabis for research.Oh for fucks sake. People like you will never agree enough studies have been performed.
People like this always default to implying marijuana is some mysterious new invention. It's quite hilarious to read living in a state that first passed MMJ laws 28 years ago and even more hilarious when you learn that people have been using it for thousands of years at this point.
Many of these places still sell cigarettes. CVS only stopped in the past 5 years... Not all things in pharmacies are medicine or any good for you.
While there are definite medical uses for cannabis, I always felt like the medical movement was both underhanded and dangerous.
It was underhanded because, like you said, there’s not a lot of research into its medical uses and doesn’t belong in a pharmacy. I’ve got a medical card, and my “diagnosis” consisted of me talking to a doctor for five minutes. It does help with my anxiety, but a lot of my usage is recreational.
It was dangerous because once we have medical research it won’t be hard to isolate the chemicals and make a pill, which puts recreational at risk of crackdown.
That already occurred decades ago - there was an Rx pill called Marinol, which was just a capsule with pure THC. It was prescribed to cancer and AIDS patients to encourage hunger and decrease nausea. Patients overwhelmingly preferred regular cannabis for a variety of reasons… one, it takes much longer for oral cannabis to take effect and it’s difficult to get the dosage right. Smoking or vaping is almost instant and you can take as many puffs as desired and judge it in real time. Also, people found the pure THC less effective and pleasant than the plant, which has many other active compounds besides just THC which moderate the effects. Some patients said that Marinol actually caused nausea, which makes sense to anyone who has ever dosed too much on edibles. More research on the other cannabinoids and their interaction is a good idea.