Should Louisiana increase the number of medical marijuana pharmacy licenses? That’s a debate underway in the ongoing legislative session. Current law provides for the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy to issue no more than ten, but Gretna Representative Joe Marino has a bill to increase the limit to 25.
“This bill has only one purpose and that’s to help patients get medicine in Louisiana, right now it’s too hard with nine (licensed pharmacies) for many people to have access to it,” said Marino.
The House Health and Welfare Committee has approved Marino’s bill and a full House vote is scheduled next week.
The legislation does not have the full support of the governor. John Bel Edwards says the framework for dispensing medical marijuana is still relatively new in Louisiana and adding more licensee holders could be unfair to the existing ones.
“And then you change that framework so that nobody would have made that investment early on, had they known you would come behind and make that change, I think that can be very problematic,” said Edwards.
Edwards believes it would be better to keep the number of licensed medical marijuana pharmacies to ten.
“Maybe one or two more if there’s some real need for that and whether you have satellite locations operating with those licenses, I think that’s a reasonable discussion to have too,” said Edwards.
Houma Representative Tanner Magee has a bill that’s passed House Health and Welfare that would allow current marijuana pharmacy license holders to have satellite locations.
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