Nearly a year after the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) sent letters to dozens of Georgia pharmacies warning them against dispensing medical marijuana in accordance with state law, at least one pharmacy is now selling cannabis in open defiance of the federal agency.
Georgia’s medical marijuana law is the first in the nation that, at least in theory, allows registered pharmacies to dispense cannabis. That plan, however, has largely been on hold following DEA warnings last November that pharmacies licensed with the agency “may only dispense controlled substances in Schedules II-V of the Controlled Substances Act.”
But a pharmacist in Augusta is now flouting that guidance. Vic Johnson, who owns the Living Well Pharmacy, began selling medical marijuana to state-registered patients earlier this month, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) report on Thursday.
“It’s a new frontier,” he told the paper. “I really think pharmacies are an ideal outlet for dispensing medical cannabis, because if you come to my pharmacy already, we can talk about what medications you already are taking.”
He also said that many patients are already taking highly addictive drugs, “and the quality of life that can happen when they come off those medications is just incredible.”
Johnson is selling products produced by Botanical Sciences, one of the state’s two licensed producers. Prior to the DEA letters—in October of last year—at least three pharmacies had begun dispensing Botanical Sciences products, the company said in a press release at the time.
DEA’s letters sent last year emphasize that pharmacies can’t legally dispense medical cannabis because it remains a Schedule I drug.
“All DEA registrants, including DEA-registered pharmacies, are required to abide by all relevant federal laws and regulations,” says a copy of a letter, sent by Matthew J. Strait, a DEA deputy assistant administrator in the agency’s Diversion Control Division. “A DEA-registered pharmacy may only dispense controlled substances in Schedules II-V of the Controlled Substances Act. Neither marijuana nor THC can lawfully be possessed, handled, or dispensed by any DEA-registered pharmacy.”
It’s unclear what penalties, if any, Johnson might incur. DEA could revoke his license to dispense other federally controlled substances, and AJC reported that it’s possible he could face other legal or criminal repercussions.
DEA did not respond to requests for comment from either Marijuana Moment or AJC.
Johnson told AJC that he’s considering giving up his DEA registry, which could allow him to sidestep the DEA situation. That would mean Living Well Pharmacy could no longer dispense other substances in Schedules II–V of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), including painkillers, sleeping pills and even some cough medicines.
He said, however, that those drugs make up only about a tenth of his current business.
Johnson acknowledged to AJC that for now, “We are in a wait and see.” But he also said that he believes ongoing legal and political changes—for example the Biden administration-backed plan to reschedule marijuana—are moving in the right direction.
Johnson, who’s been a pharmacist for nearly four decades, said he obtained a state license to dispense low-THC marijuana products earlier this summer.
“There were hoops to jump through,” he told Augusta Business Daily. “We just got licensed in late August to provide medical use products, which can include gummies, tinctures, creams or capsules. They are classified as low-THC products, containing 5 percent THC.”
Currently only low-THC marijuana products legal in Georgia, and smokable flower remains outlawed.
Johnson told local reporters that he’s already seen an uptick in sales and believes offering medical marijuana could increase business by up to 50 percent.
“I think our customers feel more comfortable buying this product through a pharmacy, where records are kept and we know their medical history,” he told Augusta Business Daily. “The other benefit is that the purchases for these products are kept separate from other prescriptions we fill.”
Living Well Pharmacy is set to host an educational event about medical marijuana on September 26, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with doctors present to explain the patient registration process.
“As long as you have your medical card, you can purchase the product here at a dispensary or at my pharmacy,” Johnson explained to local TV station WRDW. “Nobody wants to be hurting as they age. Nobody wants to, you know, wake up every day and they’re afraid to go out of the house. Or the sleep disorders that this, this drug can help with people.”
Andrew Turnage, executive director of the Georgia Access to Medical Cannabis Commission, told Marijuana Moment earlier this year that it makes perfect sense to offer patients medical marijuana at the same place they obtain their other doctor-recommended drugs.
“We know it’s the first, but we think this model is the best,” Turnage said. “And I think that a lot of other states would say, for a medical program, this is really the way that it should have been from the beginning.”
While he said at the time that he couldn’t speak to how the planned federal rescheduling of marijuana might affect marijuana being dispensed through pharmacies, Turnage said the Schedule III proposal “really does move in the direction of what Georgia intended for medical cannabis access to look like” insofar as it asserts that marijuana is a medically useful drug that should be regulated much like others.
According to a memo from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) about the implications of federal rescheduling, the move will make it easier for marijuana pharmaceuticals to be dispensed at pharmacies, but first those drugs need federal approval.
“A key difference between placement in Schedule I and Schedule III is that substances in Schedule III have an accepted medical use and may lawfully be dispensed by prescription, while substances in Schedule I cannot,” the CRS document, issued May 1, says. “However, prescription drugs must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”
It continues: “Although FDA has approved some drugs derived from or related to cannabis, marijuana itself is not an FDA-approved drug.”
In other words, the cannabis products available through state-legal medical marijuana programs like the one in Georgia still won’t be the type of pharmaceuticals DEA-registered pharmacies can dispense.
Moreover, CRS wrote, “Users of medical marijuana would need to obtain valid prescriptions for the substance from medical providers, subject to federal legal requirements that differ from existing state regulatory requirements for medical marijuana.”
A recently published paper by Robert Mikos, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School who focuses on drug law and federalism, notes that even after rescheduling, marijuana will be “subject to a litany of regulations under the CSA.”
“To begin, the CSA requires every producer and distributor of a Schedule III controlled substance to obtain a registration (e.g., a license) from the DEA before engaging in those activities,” the Tulsa Law Review paper says.
Beyond that, Mikos’s paper notes, the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act (FDCA) requires a finding that marijuana is safe and effective. Though the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued those findings in its rescheduling recommendation to DEA, those findings are separate from those required under FDCA.
Evidence that marijuana “has ‘a currently accepted medical use’ under CSA would also serve to demonstrate the drug is effective under FDCA,” the paper says, but “HHS severed the link between the two statutes in its latest scheduling evaluation.”
“In the past, one might have reasonably expected drug approval to follow on the heels of rescheduling, because the requirements for both were nearly identical,” Mikos wrote. But in light of the changes, “FDA approval of marijuana remains a long way off because the drug approval process remains as demanding as ever.”
“Until FDA approves marijuana,” he continued, “it will be virtually impossible for state-licensed marijuana firms to comply with the FDCA.”
Ira Katz, a Georgia-based pharmacist who planned to begin dispensing marijuana to registered patients under the state’s pharmacy program before the DEA warnings, told Atlanta news station WSB-TV in May that rescheduling would make marijuana suitable for prescription, though likely not in botanical form.
“We’re talking about kids with a seizure disorder, patients with neuropathic pain or pain in general,” Katz said, adding that approved medicines would “probably” initially be in the form of “tinctures, gummies and soft gels.”
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