LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) - During a public hearing Friday, Oct. 26, about 20 people took their chance to address Arkansas's Medical Marijuana Commission. Among the attorneys, and applicants for cultivation and dispensary licenses were patients approved for a medical marijuana card who said they are tired of waiting.
“I'm here today to ask you to please make opening the dispensaries a priority in your lives for the patients and the families of patients in Arkansas,” Lorna Knox, a patient who qualifies for medical marijuana, told the commission.
Knox was first prescribed medical marijuana for muscle spasms when she lived in California. She moved home to Arkansas in November 2016 – the same month voters approved medical cannabis.
As the process continues to make medical marijuana available in Arkansas, Knox said she must travel back to California in order to purchase it.
“[Two years] is too long,” she said. “A lot of people just suffer without the medicine. Most people do, but since I already was a medical marijuana patient in California I’m not going back to the other medicine.”
Members of the Medical Marijuana Commission did not respond to comments made during the meeting but will do so during their next meeting on Nov. 13 at 3:30 p.m.
“My message to Arkansans would be we certainly understand the frustration, but we’re getting close,” Medical Marijuana Spokesperson Scott Hardin said.
Hardin said a third party consulting firm will begin scoring the 198 dispensary applications on Monday and has 30 days to do so.
“We're looking at having those dispensary licenses out the door in late November and possibly December,” Hardin said.
Qualifying medical marijuana patients will receive their cards within 30 days of dispensaries opening.
“It would be a nice Christmas present to the patients of Arkansas if you could mail out those medical marijuana cards before the end of the year,” Knox told the commission.
While it’s unclear if that wish will come true, Hardin said Arkansas’s first dispensaries could open within the first quarter of 2019.