Benefits of Having A Dispensing Collective in Your Community

• Dispensing collectives provide benefits to the sick and suffering in your community. Dispensaries remove common barriers to accessing cannabis medicines. Often patients are not skilled or physically able to cultivate their medicines. A rapid onset of a serious illness normally does not afford a patient the several months and extensive costs it takes to produce quality cannabis medicines. A dispensary can provide these medicines as an alternative to potentially dangerous illicit transactions.
• Dispensing collectives provide psychosocial health benefits to patients in your community. Often patients find more than just safe and effective medicines in a collective setting. They find a community to be a part of and in turn experience much higher levels of satisfaction and wellness than a patient who is isolated away from others.
• Dispensing collectives provide key heath and social services to their patients. Dispensaries offer a wide array of cannabis therapies, giving patients the opportunity to share experiences on what may work best for different afflictions and find different methods of ingestion, such as tinctures and extracts to treat their symptoms. Collectives also provide a vast selection of social services to their patients, including counseling, support groups, help with housing and meals, hospice care, and alternative therapies like massage and yoga. These support services give most patients the opportunity to experience and try treatments they normally could not afford or known existed.
• Dispensing collectives increase public safety in the areas around them. Many cities and towns have found that crime and unwanted behaviors have decreased in an area where a well-run and regulated dispensing collective exists. Collectives take security seriously, often employing multiple security guards and implementing security cameras and alarm systems. These are natural deterrents to those who engage in unwanted behaviors and they normally move to a less monitored area, increasing safety for the collective and the neighborhood it serves.
• Dispensing collectives are good neighbors and can revitalize an area. Collectives instill good neighbor policies with their members that encourage them to be conscious and positive forces in the areas around the collective. A collective brings new people to the area to access services, which brings foot traffic to neighboring businesses and increases the vitality of the neighborhood by bringing customers to areas they normally would not visit. They patronize other businesses for convenience.
• Dispensing collectives create jobs in the community. With unemployment rates at extremely high levels, it is important to realize that a dispensing collective will employ at least 10-15 people, including management, service personnel, security, and community liaison positions.
• Dispensing collectives provide much needed revenue through business and sales taxes. A well-run dispensing collective can provide a great deal of revenue through normal business taxes and to the county through sales taxes. Oakland passed Measure F in July 2009 taxing collectives at 1.8% or 15 times the normal business rate. The measure passed with 80% of voters’ approval. Many other cities are putting the same type of measure on the upcoming ballots for special election.
• Collectives are not for profit organizations. Collectives use excess revenue to fund local projects and worthwhile organizations, such as food banks, homeless shelters, and educational assistance funds.

Frequently Asked Questions About Medical Cannabis Dispensing Collectives

• Is a health services collective that sells medical cannabis legal? Yes. To clarify the voter initiative passed in 1996, Proposition 215, the state legislature passed the Medical Marijuana Program Act (MMP) known as State Bill 420 in 2003, establishing that patients and caregivers may collectively or cooperatively cultivate and distribute cannabis medicines. The Act exempts collectives and cooperatives from criminal sanctions associated with “sales” and maintaining a place where sales occur. In 2005 California’s Third District Court of Appeals affirmed their legality in the case of People v. Urziceanu, which held that the MMP provides collectives a defense to marijuana distribution charges. In August 2008, the California Attorney General issued guidelines declaring “a properly organized and operated collective or cooperative that dispenses medical marijuana through a storefront may be lawful under California law.”
• Why do patients need access to a dispensing collective instead of growing their own? While some long-term patients have the time, space, and skill to cultivate cannabis, the majority of patients do not have the skills or ability to produce medicine. For those patients dispensing collectives are the only option for safe and legal access to these therapies. For example, many of the most serious and debilitating illnesses require immediate relief. It is unreasonable to exclude those patients most in need because they are incapable of gardening or cannot wait months for relief.
• What are other communities doing to help patients? Many communities have recognized the essential service that dispensing collectives provide and have allowed their operations or have adopted ordinances regulating their operations. Regulations are a way cities can ensure the needs of patients in their community are being met while exerting control of the organizations. It is officials’ duty to implement state law, even if they have not supported cannabis legislation in the past. Dozens of cities and many counties have adopted ordinances regulating collectives to ensure the patients in their community have access to these therapies.
• Who should administer dispensary regulation in our community? To ensure that patients, caregivers and collectives are protected, general regulatory oversight duties, such as permitting, record maintenance, and general protocols should be the responsibility of a local Department of Public Health (DPH) or the Planning Department. Besides security matters, law enforcement is ill suited in handling matters related to health and medicine.
• How many collectives do wee need in our city? Arbitrary caps on the number of collectives can be counter-productive. Like other services, competitive market forces and consumer choice will be decisive. Collectives that provide better care and service to patients will flourish and those that do not will fail. Capping the number can result in limits of consumer choice resulting in decreased quality of care and often-higher prices. It can also force patients with limited mobility to travel farther than they would normally need to in order to access their medicine and care.
• What types of zoning restrictions are needed for this type of organization? Restrictions on where collectives can locate are often unnecessary and create barriers to access. Dispensing collectives are not shown to create increases in crime or bring harm to their neighborhoods, regardless of where they are located. It is unnecessary and burdensome to require patients to travel to areas often far away from public transit to access their medicines. It is important to balance patient need with concerns

Patient Conditions for which Cannabis Medicines can be Beneficial

Patient Conditions for which Cannabis Medicines can be Beneficial

• Cancer and Chemotherapy Treatment- Cannabis is most effective to combat the side effects of the treatments used to fight cancer. Most notably are its extremely effective in curbing nausea and increasing the appetite of patients experiencing the harsh side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. It also can reduce the pain associated with the disease.
• HIV/AIDS- HIV/AIDS patients often experience wasting syndrome from the disease and the multitudes of medicines used to combat the disease. Cannabis stimulates their appetite allowing them to eat more regularly and avoid the common traits associated with wasting syndrome, as well as helps ease the pains associated with the disease itself.
• Pain Afflictions- Research shows that cannabis is a safe and effective treatment for a variety of pain related afflictions, including deep tissue pains, muscle and back pain, and neuropathic or shooting pains. Cannabis does not have the dangerous side effects of other opiate-based painkillers and is not known to be toxic at any level of ingestion, making it a much safer medicine for pain.
• Multiple Sclerosis- Cannabis improves spactisity and improves tremors in MS patients. It helps control involuntary muscle contraction, balance, bladder control, speech, and eyesight in these patients. Cannabis helps with the immune system, which is thought to be the underlying pathogenic process in MS patients.
• Gastrointestinal Disorders- Cannabis has value as an anti-emetic and analgesic medication. It helps combat the symptoms brought on by disorders such as Crohn’s Disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and Ulcerative Colitis. Cannabis interacts with the endogenous cannabinoid receptors in the digestive tract, which can result in calming spasms, assuaging pain, and improving motility. Cannabis has also been shown to have anti-inflammatory properties and recent research has demonstrated that cannabinoids are immune system modulators, either enhancing or suppressing immune response.
• Movement Disorders- Cannabis is effective in treating muscular spasticity, a common condition, affecting millions of people. This condition afflicts individuals who have suffered strokes, as well as those with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, paraplegia, quadriplegia, and spinal cord injuries. Conventional medical therapy offers little to address spasticity problems. Because cannabinoids have antispasticity, analgesic, antitremor, and antiataxia properties, cannabis is extremely effective in treating these disorders, and lacks the side effects and dangers of Vallium or other prescribed medicines.
• Aging- Cannabis has been found to help many patients suffering from conditions that afflict older patients, including arthritis, chronic pain, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, and spasticity associated with such diseases as Parkinson's.
• Arthritis- There are two common types of arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, but both affect the joints, causing pain and swelling, and limiting movement. The analgesic properties of cannabis make it useful in treating the pain associated with arthritis, both on its own and as an adjunct therapy that enhances the efficacy of opioid painkillers. Cannabis has also been shown to have powerful immune-modulation and anti-inflammatory properties suggesting that it could play a role in treating arthritis, and not just in symptom management.