Florida’s first medical marijuana dispensary opened up its doors this week in Tallahassee and business is already off to a good start.
Trulieve, Florida’s first medical marijuana dispensing organization, officially opened up shop Tuesday and CEO Kim Rivers says so far, so good.
“It's been very exciting,” she told Sunshine State News. “We have had a lot going on.”
Rivers told SSN much of the dispensary’s initial business has included discussions with Florida physicians who want to prescribe medical marijuana to their patients, primarily in educating them on the drug.
“There's a lot of misinformation [out there,] so we are trying to talk to as many as possible to see what the process [will be,]” she said.
Physicians are required to take an eight hour, state-approved Continuing Medical Education course in order to prescribe medical marijuana. Once a physician has finished the course, they then report their course completion to the Department of Health, which then places doctors on the prescriber registry after 30 days.
All of these steps, says Rivers, have been somewhat of a hurdle to overcome.
“Our biggest challenge is in educating the physicians and the patients in terms of steps required to obtain the legal medical marijuana in Florida,” she explained.
Once patients obtain the prescription, Trulieve either delivers the medical marijuana to their house or patients can come to the dispensary and pick it up themselves. Doctors prescribe a specific dosage and patients can choose to either queue it up for delivery or choose their route of of administration for their dosage in a dispensary.
Examples of routes of administration include capsules and inhalation. Rivers explained there are other routes as well.
Not just anyone can walk into Trulieve and pick up medical pot, though. Patients are required to be seen by their physician for at least 90 days and the physician is the one who has to write the prescription. Trulieve simply fulfills orders placed by physicians who want to sign off on medical marijuana for their clients.
Rivers said she expects the organization to grow steadily, but the initial introduction of a medical marijuana dispensary in the Sunshine State has already caused a frenzy.
“Within our first announcement we fielded 500-600 calls in 24 hours,” she told SSN, saying patients were calling for information about medical cannabis.
Still, Trulieve doesn't expect an overwhelming amount of orders from the get go. Though the company has already placed several orders from physicians, it expects business to grow at a constant rate, at least for now.
“It's going to be a somewhat steady ramp up because there's a lot of education to be done on the front side,” Rivers said. “It's just getting these patients communicating with physicians who have an access to the order.”
Amendment 2, which would legalize medical marijuana for patients with “debilitating” medical conditions, would certainly amplify the number of orders Trulieve would process.
“Amendment 2, from our perspective, the primary benefit is it expands the number of conditions [for patients,]” said Rivers. “It is still very specific to medical conditions. It's not full legalization of marijuana for anyone, anywhere. It will be a very regulated industry in the state.”
Floridians will cast their ballots on the amendment in November.
Trulieve plans on expanding its operation throughout the state, with locations planned statewide. The next location to open will be in Clearwater, with other locations planned for Tampa and Pensacola.
Reach reporter Allison Nielsen by email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com or follow her on Twitter: @AllisonNielsen.
