Barracks Row Medical Marijuana Dispensary Aims For July Opening
Facebook Will Not Support Medical Marijuana Advertising
by Larry Janezich
Mike Cuthriell, owner of the future Barracks Row medical marijuana dispensary, Metropolitan Wellness Center (MWC), tells Capitol Hill Corner that he expects his dispensary, located at 409 8th Street, SE, above the Barracks Row Popeye’s, “to open in July.”
He added that MWC is currently pre-registering patients and “walking them through the process by which they formally register with the Department of Health. We are also actively participating with physicians to educate them on their rights and the rights of their patients, as well as the effects and uses of cannabis. Our team has been walking patients and physicians through the process to get signed up.”
Doctors are being directed to request the formal Recommendation Forms from the Department of Health. These forms have to be completed so that the department can mail the official Recommendation Form to them. Patients are being directed to fill out the Patient Application Form now. This gets attached to their Physician’s Recommendation and mailed to the Department of Health for processing. The patient MUST select a single dispensary to become a member of in their application. In order to prevent abuse the program, patients are not permitted to go to multiple dispensaries.
All physician info is outlined here: http://mwcdc.com/physicians/
All patient info is outlined here: http://mwcdc.com/join-mwc/
Advertising the dispensary is important for its success, but it has not been easy. Cuthriell says that on the MWC’s Facebook page, he, following the practice of other businesses, “tried to pay to boost posts” – Facebook’s advertising tool for businesses. He was then notified by Facebook that MWC posts “will not be permitted for advertising because Facebook’s policy doesn’t support the nature of our business.” Cuthriell found this especially odd since the particular posts he was trying to boost “were specifically about the Department of Health’s applications for patients and the recommendation forms for Physicians. I’ve since learned that this has been their policy for years and no [marijuana dispensary] has been able to use Facebook as an advertising platform other than having a page setup for that business.”
At Mayor Gray’s community meeting on Thursday night hosted by the adjoining ANC6A across East Capitol the question was raised of how much DC Department of Health is doing to increase awareness among physicians and patients about how to participate in the program. Gray pledged to reach out to medical marijuana dispensaries for input about their needs. The Mayor also cited a little-known fact that medical marijuana dispensaries will have to be conducted on a cash basis, since credit card companies will not honor marijuana transactions – a federal crime. To that end, the mayor said, ATMs will be placed in dispensaries to facilitate the needs of patients and to reduce the crime hazard involved in carrying cash to the dispensaries.
For additional information including pre-registration of patients, please visit: http://www.mwcdc.com
You can follow Metropolitan Wellness Center on twitter here: twitter.com/mwcdc
CAPITOL HILL CORNER 