Medical Cannabis Delivery Legalized for New York

New York hasn’t had the smoothest integration of its medical cannabis program, but finally it’s beginning to change for the better. Soon New York will be allowing medicinal cannabis delivery services to deliver medicine straight to patients’ homes, among other new and positive adjustments.

The New York State Department has made a few alterations to its existing medical cannabis program that will allow deliveries to operate in the state, by the end of September. The news came with an announcement by Governor Andrew Cuomo who introduced the state’s first authorized delivery service. Governor Cuomo’s counsel, Alphonso David, commented on the reasoning behind the sudden changes, “We don’t want the federal government to come in and exercise an enormous amount of oversight and shut the entire program down. We’ve always been interested in expanding the program. We just wanted to make sure we had the data to support it,” David stated.

A report that was released earlier this month by the New York Department of Health recommended 12 different recommendations to better the medical cannabis program. The state is expected to follow through with all 12 of the recommendations.

New additions going into to the program by the end of the month include home delivery, eased cannabis access and new rules for medical cannabis in schools. There are currently 17 dispensaries operating in the state, which is a small amount of medical cannabis businesses that are expected to serve the state’s estimated 20 million residents (although only 7,005 patients has been certified to legally obtain medical cannabis). The state’s medicinal cannabis program is considered too strict by many, but the implementation of these new rules will help improve New York’s medical cannabis program for the better.