state Department of Health <\/a>wants medical marijuana patients and providers to be prepared for possible delays when the new medical marijuana law takes effect on Friday, July 1.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe law requires DOH to oversee the development and administration of the medical marijuana authorization database. State officials said in a media release on Tuesday that they are currently experiencing some software challenges with the database, and it may not be ready by July 1.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The database is necessary to produce recognition cards. Under the new law, recognition cards are required if patients and designated providers 21 and older wish to have access to the following benefits:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Purchase products sales-tax free.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Purchase up to three times the current legal limit for recreational users.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Purchase high-THC infused products.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Grow more than four plants in their residence.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Have full protection from arrest, prosecution, and legal penalties, although patients will still have an affirmative defense.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Patients and providers can still purchase marijuana from authorized retail stores; however, they can\u2019t take advantage of the benefits until the database is operational.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The department is committed to ensuring patient safety, and it will continue to work on having the database ready as soon as possible.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
State officials will issue a status update no later than Thursday if they can\u2019t meet the deadline.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The state Department of Health wants medical marijuana patients and providers to be prepared for possible delays when the new medical marijuana law takes effect on Friday, July 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23301"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23301"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}