Massachusetts Marijuana Patients Unable to Obtain Marijuana

A law enacted almost a year ago in Massachusetts is continuing to cause great hardships for patients in need of medical marijuana.

In the spring of 2013, the Department of Public Health announced that caregivers would only be allowed to grow marijuana for one patient at a time, resulting in a massive shortage of medicine. This has left many medical marijuana patients with minimal choices on how to get the medicine they need.

Patients can either grow the medicine themselves, which can prove to be a difficult and tiresome chore for many, especially those with chronic and debilitating diseases such as cancer or HIV, or they can turn to the black market where they are forced to try and purchase marijuana from a potentially dangerous source.

These patients are now being forced to wait until marijuana dispensaries open in the summer of 2014 to obtain the medicine they need. And on top of everything, they are still paying the $50 annual fee and around $200 for a doctor’s recommendation.