BRATTLEBORO — With the opening of a medical cannabis dispensary this week, Brattleboro will join Burlington, Montpelier, and Brandon as locations that provide marijuana under the provisions of a new state law.
Shayne Lynn of Southern Vermont Wellness plans on opening the new clinic on Thursday in the Vermont Building at 1222 Putney Rd., next door to the North Brattleboro post office, the Internal Revenue Service, several insurance agencies, and other medical offices.
According to the Vermont Criminal Information Center, 106 patients who qualify under the law as living with “debilitating medical conditions” were registered in Windham County as of last August to legally buy marijuana for therapeutic purposes.
Marijuana has been legal under state law since 2007, but until further legislation in 2011, which created a mechanism for legally growing and distributing the drug for patients, patients were on their own.
“This is really medicine, and the people coming in for medicine really do need it,” Lynn said.
Lynn, a Townsend native whose parents ran a farm summer camp for more than 20 years, began his career as a ski racer and coach at the Stratton Mountain School.
He runs a photography business out of Burlington and serves as director of cultivation for Champlain Valley Dispensary in Burlington, a dispensary which has seen success in seven months of operation.
Burlington neighbors of the dispensary have responded with “nothing but support,” Lynn said, and he hopes that Brattleboro will offer support for his new endeavor.
The new dispensary will share resources with Champlain Valley Dispensary's cultivation facility in Chittenden County, which grows 18 strains of the two major types of cannibis plants (Indica and Sativa), each optimized toward treating certain ailments. The Brattleboro dispensary will rotate these strains six at a time.
Each approved dispensary, under the regulation of the Department of Public Safety, can also have a cultivation facility to have on hand 28 mature plants, 98 immature plants, and up to 28 ounces of cured product.
He describes the facility as state-of-the-art, one that makes use of plasma lighting, high-pressure sodium lighting, LED lighting, and CFL florescent lighting. Running 1,000-watt lights on plants with climate control, quality is of the utmost importance. The facility uses a soil-less system.
Lynn does not have plans for a such a facility in Brattleboro.
Patients can expect to see strains such as White Rhino, an Indica used for chronic pain and sleep disturbances, or Arjan's Haze, a Sativa cross used primarily for muscle spasm relief in multiple sclerosis patients.
Cannabis is not only offered as whole flowers but also as tinctures of concentrated cannabis oils. One such product, Rick Simmons Oil, is geared especially toward the reduction of cancer and seizures.
Currently, cannabis is tested through third-party means, which can be expensive, but Lynn is excited about the purchase of a new liquid chromatography machine, which will allow both dispensaries to test the strains for the levels of two active compounds, cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
The cultivation facility relies on donated seeds and luck to develop strains high in CBD and lower in THC.
Security and discretion
Vermont's regulations were written by the Department of Public Safety to ensure the safety of Vermonters.
A dispensary must be a nonprofit entity, and its business plan must make provisions for security.
The dispensary is discreetly tucked into a corner with no signage. Neighboring businesses were unaware of the new addition to the building.
Behind a front door armed with a doorbell, security camera, and phone is a reception area. Only patients will be allowed past that point, and they must be escorted through with a pass card to the clinic itself.
State regulations also require patients to pick up and transport the marijuana in a lockbox.
Because the business is nonprofit and investors do not share a stake in the company, “finding investors has been difficult,” Lynn said.
With the help of several professionals and lawyers, Southern Vermont Wellness passed the application process. Each application for dispensaries requires a $2,500 application fee and $25,000 fee for the first year of business. Subsequent years will run the dispensary $30,000.
“Like-minded individuals” who share a passion for medical cannabis and the relief it can provide to those in need provided backing to the enterprise, Lynn said.
Southern Vermont Wellness faces another kind of risk: federal penalties for cultivating medical cannabis.
The federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) classifies cannabis as a Schedule I drug with no accepted medical value in treatment. Although Vermont supports the medical value of cannabis, the federal government still does not.
Although U.S. Attorney Tristram Coffin, the federal prosecutor for Vermont, warned during the dispensary debate that the U.S. government would aggressively continue to enforce federal law, U.S. Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole stressed in a memo last year that limited government resources should be used to go after “criminal enterprises, gangs, and cartels.”
Evolving public policy
As Lynn prepares to open the dispensary, which will be open by appointment Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., more legislative activity is taking place in Montpelier.
On the legislative front, a bill introduced in the Vermont Senate by state Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, proposes to eliminate the 1,000-patient statewide cap established in the current law.
This bill, if passed, would allow clinics to cultivate more plants per patient. It also would add post-traumatic stress disorder as a condition for which marijuana may be prescribed and waives a six-month waiting period in cases of terminal diagnosis.
As of last July 1, possession of small amounts of cannabis has become a civil infraction. Vermont Sen. David Zuckerman, P/D-Chittenden, has further proposed a bill to legalize the recreational use of cannabis and establish a system of retail sales and taxation.
Lynn, however, is in favor of taking it slow.
“Vermont has taken the right steps [and we need to] watch Colorado and Washington to see the mistakes they make and what they do right,” he said. “This is a big change, and [taking it slow] gives the communities a chance to get used to this.”