Monthly growth in patient rolls and sales for Ohio’s medical marijuana program picked up in September, according to updated figures from the Ohio Board of Pharmacy.
Here are the latest stats as of Sept. 30:
• 62,246 recommendations
• 63,819 registered patients
• 4,300 patients with veteran status
• 2,815 patients with indigent status
• 363 patients with a terminal diagnosis
• 40,571 unique patients who purchased medical marijuana (as reported to OARRS by licensed dispensaries)
• 6,225 registered caregivers
Month over month, recommendations grew by 6,973 (12%), registered patients increased by 6,230 (10.8%) and unique patients buying some type of marijuana product grew by 4,842 (13.5%).
In August, compared to July, recommendations grew by 4,650 (9.1%), registered patients increased by 4,507 (8.4%) and unique patients buying some type of marijuana product grew by 5,445 (17.9%).
Business activity should continue to pick up steam. There now are at least 39 dispensaries open in Ohio with at least one in each quadrant of the state. The southeast corner was without a dispensary until Strawberry Fields opened in Marietta last month.
High prices and limited access to dispensaries have been blamed for muted sales compared to what some businesses had been anticipating.
The expectation is that many patient consumers will participate as dispensaries stock up on manufactured products like edibles, oils and tinctures. Some marijuana processors recently committed to listing ingredients on vape oils to address safety concerns in response to a rash of vaping-related illnesses that have now been reported in every U.S. state except Alaska.
A definitive cause of those illnesses has yet to be identified, though several have been traced back to black-market products cut with ingredients like vitamin E acetate, something more common in skincare products that acts as a thickening agent in illicit vape oils and isn’t meant to be inhaled.
Class-actions lawsuits are starting to come out involving makers of cannabidiol (CBD) products — and it is likely a sign of what’s to come in the burgeoning legal marijuana industry.
In a recent client alert, Frantz Ward‘s Gregory Farkas writes: The cannabis industry in the United States is relatively new. But a series of class actions filed within the last month alleging deceptive labeling of cannabidiol (“CBD”) products demonstrate that some of the legal issues the industry faces are not.
He references a couple cases in Florida: Gaddis v. Just Brands USA Inc. and Potter v. Potnetwork Holdings Inc. He also cites a Massachusetts case: Ahumada v. Global Widget LLC.
At issue in all those cases is the amount of CBD in products including gummies, tinctures, vape carts and edibles, as well as related marketing campaigns that would be disingenuous if advertising products with more CBD in them than they actually contain.
While CBD derived from industrial hemp was effectively legalized with the 2018 Farm Bill — providing each state has a legal framework for hemp, which Ohio didn’t until earlier this year — the Food and Drug Administration is still figuring out how exactly to regulate the new CBD market.
The class-action lawsuits already filed should serve as a warning to businesses getting in on the CBD craze.
“Consumer class actions are only one peril facing manufacturers of CBD products” Farkas writes. “Deceptive marketing claims by competitors are also possible under the federal Lanham Act and analogous state statutes. So it is vitally important that manufacturers of CBD products make sure, and be able to document, that the information on their labels and websites is consistent with what is in their products.”
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