The Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) has published their draft rules and regulations governing medical marijuana registration, testing, and labeling in Arkansas.

This is important to the MMJ industry because the ADH controls these aspects of the business in Arkansas:

• Ease of patient registration and renewal periods for MMJ cards
• The list of qualifying medical conditions
• The testing, labeling, and packaging procedures for MMJ

The ADH has scheduled a public hearing so that those interested can comment on these proposed rules and regulations.

Here’s the meeting info:

• Auditorium of the Arkansas Department of Health
• 4815 West Markham Street, Little Rock, AR
• Friday, March 10, 2017 at 2:00 p.m.

These are the ACIA suggestions and concerns in regards to the ADH rules:

• The process for obtaining a an MMJ patient card (registry identification card) should be simple and easy, preferably with online submission as an option.
• Physicians should be able to submit the patient information electronically to minimize delay.
• The fee for the patient cards should be affordable.
• Patients with a chronic condition should not have to re-register every year.
• The process for adding qualifying medical conditions should be straightforward and as objective as possible. As of now the Director has final say when approving or denying additional medical conditions.
• The system for tracking MMJ purchased by qualifying patients should be electronic, and it should interface with industry standard software.
• MMJ labeling requirements should not be cumbersome or ambiguous. One potential issue is that the rules say that a label may not ‘be attractive to minors’. That is too ambiguous and needs to be made more specific.
• Testing of MMJ should conform to common standards already in place in other states. For example, the sample size required in the draft rules could be as high as 8/10 of an ounce of MMJ, or about $350 worth of MMJ – that’s too high.
• MMJ testing results should be able to be submitted electronically.