Hawaii opens its doors to medical cannabis

Hawaii’s first medical cannabis dispensary has opened itsdoors one week after the Department of Health granted a license to Steep Hill Hawaii to test consumer products.

The approval for Maui Wellness Group’s Maui Grown Therapies Kahului location was granted by the Health Department on Tuesday.In the report, Teri Freitas Gorman, Maui Grown Therapies director of community relations and patient affairs, said the dispensary would launch a “soft opening” after doing intakes for about 400 patients prior to gaining Health Department approval.

A second dispensary, Aloha Green in Oahu, expects to open its doors today.Under Hawaii’s medical cannabis law, patients and caregivers can purchase up to four ounces of medical cannabis during a consecutive 15-day period and up to eight ounces over a consecutive 30-day period.

It’s been two years since the state’s Medical Marijuana Dispensary program law came out. “We realize that registered patients and caregivers and some of the licensed dispensaries have been waiting for a laboratory to become operational to test medical cannabis prior to consumption and sale,” said Keith Ridley, chief of the Health Department’s Office of Health Care Assurance and overseer of the medical cannabis dispensary program.

Maybe they’ve waited a long, but finally the country joins to other states like Nevada or Florida in opening its market, laws and laboratories to the medical cannabis regulation.