East Valley Tribune:  In this story Will Humble, the former Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services explains Proposition 205, the Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana Act.  “If Prop. 205 passes, dispensaries get first crack at becoming retail marijuana stores. . . . Humble said medical marijuana patients can continue that routine if Prop. 205 passes and avoid paying the 15 percent surcharge on retail marijuana. . . . If approved by voters, the new law allows anyone 21 or older to buy up to one ounce of marijuana or up to five grams of concentrated marijuana, beginning March 2, 2018. . . . Anyone 21 or older would be able to grow up to six of their own plants, although landlords are allowed to prohibit growing plants on their property.”

Phoenix Business Journal:  “Will Humble, who resigned in March as director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, has landed at the University of Arizona, where he has served as adjunct faculty for nearly a dozen years.  On April 13, he will begin his new position as division director for health policy and evaluation at the Center for Population Science and Discovery at the Arizona Health Sciences Center.”

Tucson Daily Star:  “Arizona’s chief health officer wants to make it more difficult to add new conditions to the list for which doctors can recommend medical marijuana.  The change would require “clear and convincing evidence,” published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, that there is some benefit from the use of marijuana for the specified medical condition.  State Health Director Will Humble said that probably means multiple articles.”

The Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services said the following on July 26, 2013:

“We’ve issued 61 medical marijuana dispensary operating licenses so far with only 2 weeks left on the 52 week time-clock.  We have 21 more inspections scheduled between now and August 6, which is the deadline for Registration Certificate holders to get their Approval to Operate License so they can renew their Certificate (a 1-year timeframe).   The biggest hang up with the remaining certificate holders seems to be their city occupancy approval (we don’t give operating licenses without a certificate of occupancy from their local jurisdiction).

I was a witness in court a couple of times last week testifying in a case in which the Plaintiffs argue that our requirement that Registration Certificate holders (the lottery winners) get their Approval to Operate within 1 year is unreasonable.  Under our regulations, the Approval to Operate is required in order to renew a Registration Certificate.  Of course, there’s more to the lawsuit than that- but that’s a core issue.

We’re awaiting the Superior Court Judge’s ruling in the next week or so.  We expect the ruling to provide some clarity about whether and how we’ll proceed when it comes to renewing Registration Certificates.  The decision may also influence the timeline for the “second round” issuance of Certificates.”

Will Humble, Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services wrote the following on October 22, 2012, on his blog:

“There seems to be some confusion going on right now about the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act and products made with marijuana.  Patients and caregivers can make edibles and things like tinctures with usable marijuana from the patient or caregiver’s allowable amount of marijuana.  However, there’s really no legal way for a patient or caregiver to sell these edibles or tinctures, to anybody. A patient or caregiver may be able to purchase these products from a dispensary, once the dispensary is licensed to operate.”

On July 25, 2012, Will Humble, Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, was interviewed by Steve Goldstein of KJZZ radio.

Will Humble, Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, wrote the following on July 6, 2012:

“The AZ Medical Marijuana Act requires us to periodically accept petitions to add new medical conditions to the list of conditions that qualify folks for an AZ Medical Marijuana Registration Card.  In January, we accepted petitions from the public and had a public hearing in May.  Folks submitted numerous articles as a part their petitions for PTSD 1; PTSD 2; Depression; Migraines; and Generalized Anxiety Disorder.   We also received lots of informal comments regarding adding PTSD; Depression; Migraines; Generalized Anxiety Disorder and General comments.

We also contracted with the U of A to review published scientific studies related to marijuana use and the petitioned conditions.  You can see the UA analyses for Depression; Generalized Anxiety Disorder; Migraine Headaches; and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on our petition website.  Our ADHS medical team will be meeting within the next week or so and will be providing me with their analysis and recommendations.  The ultimate decision rests with me,  the Director, and I have a decision deadline in late July.”

The following is the text of a post made by Will Humble, Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, on his blog on June 23, 2012:

“We have a couple of new projects in the works to ensure that the dispensary system reflects a medical rather than a recreational system.  We’re working with Arizona’s pharmacy/poison control systems to put together a contract to provide technical assistance and educational materials to the future dispensary medical directors.  We’re also putting together a contract to hire a vendor to help us ensure that the future dispensaries are truly “non-profit”.  The  contractor will be reviewing the required dispensary audited financial statements to make sure they’re on the up-and-up in terms of truly being “non-profit”.  For example- (among other things) the contractor will be looking for evidence that dispensaries are getting “fair value” for goods, services, salaries, and reimbursements- to make sure that they don’t use a shell game to over-pay for things or services as a way of moving assets out of the dispensary.  Stay tuned.”

The following is the text of a post made by Will Humble, Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, on his blog on June 21, 2012:

“Overall, we ended up receiving 486 medical marijuana dispensary applications among our 126 Community Health Analysis Areas (CHAAs).  Twenty-seven of the CHAAs had no applicant at all- leaving 99 Community Health Analysis Areas with at least 1 applicant.  Seventy-five of the 99 had more than 1 applicant.  Assuming that each of these end up being complete, we’ll need to randomly select successful applicants in 75 of the CHAAs (we’ll be posting an updated summary of how many complete applications there are by CHAA in a few weeks).  Here’s how it’ll work for the competitive CHAAs on Selection Tuesday (August 7):

We’ll be using a device that blows balls inside of a clear cage to randomly select the successful applicant in each CHAA.  Applicants will be assigned a random code in advance…  and the person with the code that matches the ball that blows into the chamber will be allocated a Registration Certificate.  We’ll repeat this process for each of the competitive CHAAs.  The process will be webcast live on a URL that we identify a few days before August 7.  The Act doesn’t allow us to identify the successful applicants by name or even business name publicly- so the live announcement will be made using the code that only the applicants will have.  Each applicant will receive their unique identifier electronically so they’ll know whether they won their CHAA drawing via the webcast.  The Certificates will be mailed later that day.

Everybody that’s allocated a Dispensary Registration Certificate will have a little less than a year to build out and get an “Approval to Operate”.  Keep in mind that an application for Approval to Operate a dispensary is not complete until we get a written notice that the dispensary is ready for an inspection and they meet our criteria.  Our team recently put together some tools to help Registration Certificate holders meet our Approval to Operate criteria, including an Approval to Operate Application Checklist, Approval to Operate Application Instructions, and the Dispensary Inspection Checklist.”

Yesterday Will Humble, Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, wrote the following on his blog:

“It’s been a busy week for our medical marijuana team.  Our 2-week dispensary application period ended a couple of hours ago…  as did the hearing regarding adding new debilitating medical conditions.

We received 484 dispensary applications over the last 2 weeks.  As you know, we have 126 Community Health Analysis Areas (CHAAs) and a maximum of 126 possible dispensaries (one per CHAA).   Some of our CHAA’s received multiple applications- for example, the Estrella CHAA had 16 applicants and the Flagstaff E  CHAA 13 had applicants.  Many other CHAAs had only 1 applicant. 27 areas didn’t receive any applications.  You can see the number of applications by CHAA on our website.

Our team just finished logging all of the applications that we received and has already started reviewing some of the applications for “Administrative Completeness”.  Any applications that are “Administratively Incomplete” (in other words, if they’re missing something) will be returned to the applicants so they can correct whatever is wrong.  In June, we’ll be checking for “Substantive Completeness” (which is a more thorough, quality review), and the applicants will have another chance to make corrections.  We expect to award all of the Registration Certificates on August 7.

Registration Certificates will be awarded to applicants in CHAAs with only 1 applicant on August 7 as long as their application is Administratively and Substantively complete.  We’ll be holding a random drawing on August 7 to award Certificates in the CHAAs with more than 1 qualified applicant.   Of course, some CHAAs will not have a dispensary this year because we didn’t have an applicant.

We also had our hearing regarding adding debilitating medical conditions this afternoon at our Laboratory.  We heard from dozens of folks – some urged us to add the conditions and some that urged us not to.  We have also received hundreds of comments on-line.  We have several more weeks before we need to make a decision.  If you’d like to view the public comment session, we have a link on our website.”

The following text was posted by Will Humble, Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, on his blog on May 14, 2012:

“Today marks the start of the 2-week window for applying for a medical marijuana dispensary Registration Certificate in Arizona.  Prospective applicants can check out our Registration Certificate Application Checklist, Instructions, and the official Application on our Medical Marijuana Dispensary webpage.  In the first two hours, seven people had dropped off applications.

We’ll start reviewing applications as they come in- and we’ll stop taking applications at the close of business on May 25.  We’ll have 30 working days to review the applications- and folks will have 20 working days to submit any documents or information that were missing during our review of the application.  We expect to award all of the Medical Marijuana Dispensary Registration Certificates on August 7.  If there’s only 1 qualified applicant in a Community Health Analysis Area- that applicant will be awarded a Registration Certificate.  We’ll be holding a random drawing on August 7 to award Registration Certificates in the CHAAs with more than 1 qualified applicant.

We’ll refresh our dispensary application page every weekday around the close of business to show how many applications we’ve received by Community Health Analysis Area.”

The Arizona Republic interviewed Will Humble, the Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services.

In this radio interview on April 25, 2012, with Steve Goldstein of KJZZ 91.5 FM radio in Phoenix, Arizona, the Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services discusses ADHS’ process for adding new conditions for which an Arizona doctor may recommend medical marijuana to licensed patients.  The new conditions under consideration are: (1) Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; (2) Generalized Anxiety Disorder; (3) Migraines; and (4) Depression.  The public may give input on these four conditions at a hearing to be held:

May 25, 2012 from 1:00 – 4:00 p.m.
State Laboratory Conference Room
250 N. 17th Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85007

On April 20, 2012, Will Humble, Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, wrote on his blog:

“The voter approved language in the AZ Medical Marijuana Act directs us to periodically accept and evaluate petitions to add new debilitating medical conditions.  We’ve made it through the first phase of considering whether to add 4 new debilitating conditions… 1) Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; 2) Generalized Anxiety Disorder; 3) Migraines; and 4) Depression. You’ll be able to give us your thoughts about these four conditions at a public hearing next month (May 25^th from 1 – 4 p.m. at our State Lab).  You can read the information we already have about these four starting next week.

If we decide to add PTSD or any other debilitating conditions, we want to make sure we’re on solid medical ground.  I’m heading down to a conference in Tucson next weekend where physicians can get Continuing Medical Education credits for learning about medical cannabis.”

Arizona Republic:  “He said the ‘gold rush’ for medical-marijuana dispensary  licenses died down in the past year after litigation tied the program up.  ‘I just don’t sense the same land-rush type of attitude  that we had a year ago,’ Humble said. ‘I don’t think we’ll be overwhelmed with  applications’.”

Phoenix Business Journal:   “’Had we gone forward in 2011 with the dispensary applications, I think we would have had hundreds of applications.’ . . . he expects that the most that will be awarded is 110 dispensary licenses.”

The following was posted on Arizona Department of Health Services Director Will Humble’s blog on April 11, 2012:

The tumblers have clicked, and the race to apply for a dispensary is on.  Our revised rules for regulating Medical Marijuana were filed and became official today- and we’ll be accepting applications for Medical Marijuana Dispensary Registration Certificates from May 14 through May 25.

The unofficial rules incorporate the changes that were required by a recent Superior Court Ruling.  The judge ordered us: 1) to strike several of the selection criteria we had been planning to use for competitive areas of the state (areas where there will be more than 1 applicant per Community Health Analysis Area); and 2) to implement the law-  which is what we’re doing.

You can check out our Registration Certificate Application Checklist, Registration Certificate Application Instructions, and the official Registration Certificate Application on our Medical Marijuana Dispensary webpage.  Please don’t try to apply early- the first day we’ll actually accept applications will be May 14.   Starting May 14th, every day or so, we’ll refresh our dispensary application page to show how many applications we’ve received by Community Health Analysis Area (CHAA).

We’ll start reviewing applications as they come in (starting on May 14) and we’ll stop taking applications at the close of business (5 p.m.) on May 25.  We’ll have 30 working days to review the applications- and applicants will have 20 working days to submit any documents or information that were missing during our review of the application.  We expect to award Medical Marijuana Dispensary Registration Certificates on August 7.  If there’s only 1 qualified applicant in a CHAA, that applicant will be awarded a Registration Certificate.  We’ll be holding a random drawing in early August to award Registration Certificates in CHAAs with more than 1 qualified applicant.

Please visit our Medical Marijuana website if you have any further questions.  The materials that you’ll need to apply are all posted on-line- including the Application Checklist, Application Instructions, and the official Medical Marijuana Dispensary Registration Certificate Application