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The businesses lined up to be the District’s first set of medical marijuana dispensaries have been ready to open for weeks, but the D.C. government continues to push back the actual date of when they can start filling prescriptions.
Although the clinics have been ready for over a month, with supplies coming in and patient recommendation forms having been drawn up by the D.C. Department of Health, city officials have not yet approved any physicians to prescribe marijuana as a treatment for their patients who suffer from one of a small number of chronic illnesses, The Washington Examiner reports.
Two clinics—Capital City Care and Takoma Wellness Center—have received their licenses, while a third, Metropolitan Wellness Center, is waiting for confirmation. But until the Department of Health gives physicians the go-ahead, the clinics’ curative cannabis remains under lock and key. The District’s medical marijuana law, passed into law in 1998 but held up by a decade and a half of regulatory delays, allows the stuff to be prescribed patients suffering from HIV/AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, and Crohn’s disease.
According to the Examiner, city officials are trying to “get things right,” in the words of mayoral spokesman Pedro Ribeiro. The Examiner also reports that the Department of Health sent application forms to doctors last Friday.
There are 9,500 physicians licensed to practice medicine in D.C. Of those, the Department of Health estimates only 110 are interested in being able to prescribe marijuana as a palliative treatment.