Staten Island Sen. Diane Savino is pushing New York to open more dispensaries for medical marijuana and reach out to doctors to prescribed medically based cannabis in order to boost demand.
“Right now we don’t have enough patients for the existing license holders that we have,” she said in an interview. “We have an excess product. We don’t have excess patients. We still need to build the patient base, we need to engage more doctors.”
Savino raised the issue on Thursday in the joint legislative health budget hearing in Albany, telling Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top health officials she is opposed to granting more licenses to manufacture medical marijuana. Instead, she wants the state to grant licenses for opening dispensaries in different areas.
The current law as written doesn’t allow for that.
New York over the last year has sought to expand its fledgling medical marijuana program by allowing nurse practitioners and physician assistance to participate and expanded the number of illnesses to qualify for the drug.
“It’s a very successful program and even across the country people have said it’s a very successful program,” said Health Commissioner Howard Zucker after his testimony. “We are growing it slowly. We are growing it aggressively, but we are growing it slowly.”
Zucker acknowledged, however, there is room to expand access for patients.
“The issue really is here is we have gaps in the state and we need to identify those — where people don’t have as much access and we are working on that,” he said.