Photo by clarissa.stark.

At some point next year, medical marijuana will finally be available to qualifying patients in the District. The problem? It might be too expensive for anyone to grow it or sell it, much less for anyone to actually afford to buy it.

A comprehensive set of rules and regulations published by Mayor Adrian Fenty’s administration on August 6 outline a tightly restricted system where growing, selling and buying marijuana for medicinal use is subject to a number of bureaucratic loopholes. Amongst those are rules, regulations and fees for anyone looking to operate one of the city’s five dispensaries (where patients will get the marijuana) and 10 cultivation centers (where the marijuana will be grown).

Just filing an application to run a dispensary or cultivation will set any prospective entrepreneurs back $5,000, while the annual licensing fee for a cultivation will cost a cool $5,000 and a dispensary a stiff $10,000. And that’s not even including registration costs for managers, employees, officers, and so on. Needless to say, start-up and operating costs won’t be low.

The D.C. Patients’ Cooperative, a local non-profit that has advocated on behalf of the system and is planning on opening an Adams Morgan-based dispensary, recently outlined its grievances with the fees in comments submitted to the proposed rules. (The rules were open to 45 days of public comment, and will be voted on taken up by the D.C. Council by October 19 at some point this Fall.) According to the group, the fees aren’t only excessive, but might make opening or running a dispensary or cultivation center prohibitively expensive.