With the activity surrounding medical marijuana legalization in a number US states, it is surprising that so few are aware of how the medical marijuana process operates. A lot of effort goes into the cultivation and distribution of marijuana. And this is even more applicable to medical marijuana, where the strains have to be of the highest quality and comply with the laws surrounding marijuana and medicine. There are a large amount of checks and procedures that have to be undertaken between planting and distribution at a medical dispensary. All medical marijuana is supposed be tracked and monitored at all points, though this is not quite the case as of yet. It is still a schedule one drug at the federal level, though this may change over time. It is possible that the Trump administration might relent next year as more and more people start voicing their opinion on the classification of marijuana as a schedule one drug like heroin and cocaine.
Marijuana from Farm to Patient
Many questions still surround the tracking of medical marijuana. It is still quite a new industry in many states. The first state to legalize medical marijuana was California in 1996, and medical marijuana is now legal in 29 states. But it is up to each state to implement the law in its own way, and this is often again decentralized as each county has its own rules and procedures for the tracking of marijuana. It can be safely said that not all medical marijuana is 100% tracked, and such a procedure would require a lot of thought and oversight.
A new type of technique for the tracking of medical marijuana has been suggested in California by Humboldt County officials. The program is known as the Humboldt Proof of Origin Pilot Program and is a program designed to track medical cannabis from farm to patient. The way that it is tracked is through a form of stamp. The Pilot Program is currently being carried out on a small subset of the medical marijuana industry. It currently includes 11 cultivators, two manufacturers and several medical dispensaries. There will be a QR code on the marijuana tracking stamp and it will have information on the farm where the marijuana was produced, the producer, the lab results of the product, and so on. The county is now making the project a permanent feature and the proof of origin program is here to stay in Humboldt county. All medical marijuana businesses in the county will be forced to join the program.
California Marijuana Regulations
But this level of monitoring is not being considered only by Humboldt county. The state of Californian recently proposed a set of rules that track nearly every aspect of the growth and retailing of medical cannabis. The rules would require that patient identification numbers would be entered into a state database. And the fear is that the government would carefully monitor patients to see if they were buying more marijuana that the allocated quota. There is an even greater worry of increase state surveillance. However, according to some, it would be untenable for the state to keep track of every medical marijuana patient in the state. A huge amount of resources would be needed to go to such details and to track and send notifications and complete all associated paperwork to check what every single marijuana patient is consuming every week. It would be a senseless mass surveillance project.
California State Governor Jerry Brown wants to consolidate the rules regarding both medical and recreational marijuana into one. Hopefully what this means is that the proposal regarding the tracking of medical marijuana from farm to patient will be scrapped and the rules regarding medical marijuana come closer to those governing recreational marijuana. Marijuana consumers can hope that it does not swing the other way, and that recreational marijuana comes under the ambit of rules governing medical marijuana. If recreational marijuana has to be tracked and monitored in the same way that medical marijuana does, it will have massive implications for individual civil liberties. It’s a lot of paperwork to grow a plant and consume it.
Too Much Oversight?
The Humboldt Proof of Origin Pilot Programmight appear a little draconian to some. There really is no need for such a high level of oversight for a simple plant. And the idea seems to be catching on in California. However, the upside is that this seems to only be for medical marijuana, and at least in this area the strains need to be of a very high quality, so perhaps such attention to detail is necessary to a degree. In areas where recreational Winters marijuana Delivery is legal, such as California, it does not matter all that much. Citizens can simply grow their own plants if the rules and regulations regarding the use of medical marijuana become too onerous. This is what will most likely happen as the level of bureaucracy surrounding the growth of a medical plant grows and grows. At some point, it will become too much of a drain and the only alternative will be to grow your own or trust a local recreational grower.
Unfortunately, it does take small time individuals out of the equation in terms of growing medical marijuana. That function is going to be completed by businesses as there are going to be more rules and requirements than are not worth the effort on an individual level.
