The TerraVida Holistic Center, a minority women owned company, will open its doors this week to their second Pennsylvania medical marijuana dispensary, located in Abington PA. Their first center in Sellersville, opened back in February.
Opening day for the TerraVida dispensary is this Thursday beginning at 10:00 a.m. The center is located on the 1600 block of Old York Road, the former Abington Veterinary Hospital building.
Many residents in the area showed signs of concern about the facility opening up, as this is the same company that formally proposed to open a location in Mt. Airy. The plans were shot down by the Mt. Airy community claiming it “will cause more traffic, more trash, more crime and more drugs and no, not the medicinal kind”, reported by Fox29News.
TerraVida Holistic Center is for medically approved patients only and not open to general public. To be a qualified patient, there is a process that one needs to go through. Here is how it works. To start, you must have a medical marijuana card to step foot in the TerraVida center, with the exception of parents, legal guardians, caregivers and spouses of a minor under the age of 18, all whom will need to have a Safe Harbor Letter (which requires a separate qualifying process).
As stated in the law, the patient must first be diagnosed with one of the 17 medical debilitating conditions, this then allows you to start the pre-qualifying process. Next, you must have approval from a certified Pennsylvania medical marijuana physician. That approval form will then need to be submitted to the PA Department of Health Site. Once the patient is approved by the state, they will receive a link to apply for his/her medical marijuana card. The dispensary can not supply the patient any product until the effective date that is printed on the card.
“Medical marijuana is legal, safe and now available to Pennsylvanians suffering from 17 serious medical conditions. In less than two years, we have developed a regulatory infrastructure, approved physicians as practitioners, certified patients to participate and launched a new industry to help thousands find relief from their debilitating symptoms,” Governor Tom Wolf said.
The new law went into effect back on April 17, 2016. The launching of the medical marijuana didn’t take place in PA until February 2018. As Wolf stated above, the only way to receive the medical approval is to have one of the following conditions listed in the Medical Marijuana Act:
- Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.
- Autism.
- Cancer.
- Crohn’s Disease.
- Damage to the nervous tissue of the spinal cord with objective neurological indication of intractable spasticity.
- Epilepsy.
- Glaucoma.
- HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) / AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome).
- Huntington’s Disease.
- Inflammatory Bowel Disease.
- Intractable Seizures.
- Multiple Sclerosis.
- Neuropathies.
- Parkinson’s Disease.
- Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.
- Severe chronic or intractable pain of neuropathic origin or severe chronic or intractable pain in which conventional therapeutic intervention and opiate therapy is contraindicated or ineffective.
- Sickle Cell Anemia
The TerraVida centers currently carry such products like cannabis concentrates, RSO syringes, vaporizers (disposable and cartridges), and limited capsules. They are expecting to have different types of topicals, patches, creams, tinctures, lotions & ointments, sometime soon.
In addition, Governor Wolf stated in his latest release that a form of dry leaf or flower for vaping will be coming in the near future.
My administration is committed to ensuring patients who need and would benefit from this medicine have access to it. The final report of the Medical Marijuana Advisory Board continues to put patients first and will improve the program to give greater access to patients by breaking down financial and administrative barriers.
Allowing dry leaf for vaporization will shorten the time it takes to get medication to dispensaries, expand options for the growing number of patients, and hopefully make the program less cost-prohibitive for some patients.
Currently, the PA state law still forbids selling the plant in a smokeable or edible form, but now dispensaries are expecting to have it available possibly in a few months.
The PA Department of Health initially stated that they will allow permits for no more than 50 dispensaries within the state boundaries. The demand seems to be growing faster then expected, so one may wonder if that might change too.
There are state regulations that the dispensaries must abide by to operate such as;
- All facilities awarded permits are required to do a two hour training class.
- Each dispensary may have no more than three separate locations.
- In order to receive a permit you must provide the ability to maintain effective security and control to prevent diversion, abuse or other illegal conduct.
- All dispensaries are prohibited from disposing any of the marijuana as waste (including the scraps).
TerraVida is soon to open their third location within the next few weeks, which is located in Malvern PA. That will make it 8 total dispensaries in Pennsylvania, selling medical marijuana. Find out more about the TerraVida Centers here.