California’s cannabis program remains up in the air less than two months before launch. The safest bet might be to remain a patient, even within a legal climate.
Everyone’s anticipating the rollout of California’s adult-use cannabis program in 2018, but medical marijuana patients may want to hold onto their recommendations just a little bit longer. Come January 1st, Californians likely still won’t be able to ditch their medical cards and simply buy weed from a retailer.
Even in an adult-use market, having a medical marijuana recommendation will come with its own set of benefits, like reduced prices — adult-use weed is expected to cost 14 to 20 percent more than medical — and access to a greater number of dispensaries.
But that’s not all: medical marijuana patients can purchase cannabis starting at age 18, rather than having to wait until they’re 21. Moreover, having a medical recommendation on your person means you have the right to carry medical cannabis freely, without trouble from law enforcement. Otherwise, under Prop 64, you can only carry up to an ounce in public.
“With 482 municipalities in California and 58 counties, essentially all of them have to make the decision themselves whether they’ll allow adult-use dispensaries, so if they don’t allow for recreational licenses and someone in the county wants to get cannabis, they’ll only be able to get it if they have a [medical] recommendation,” explains Dr. Perry Solomon, chief medical officer at HelloMD.
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What’s more, he explains, medical patients can maintain relationships with their doctors in order to learn about the kind of cannabis they should take for their particular conditions. “You’re essentially at the whim and knowledge of the budtender [in a dispensary], but if you’re older, middle-aged, or whatnot and you know nothing [about cannabis], you won’t get much of an education. Is it worth $49 to get advice for your medical conditions, in privacy without people hanging around, in a HIPAA-compliant, medically oriented setting?”
Nonetheless, not every patient is keeping tabs on California’s messy rollout of its adult-use market — and once their medical recommendations expire, they may not know better to renew them. Solomon suspects he eventually may lose business, but so far it’s holding steady.
Read More: Californians, you should probably keep your medical marijuana cards in 2018