Spot health inspections could soon become the reality for medical marijuana dispensaries in Arizona.
Senate Bill 1010 seeks to change the current Arizona laws governing the health and safety regulations of the medical marijuana industry. As it exists now, health inspectors need to give an advanced notice of what day they’re planning on visiting a dispensary, allowing the shop to plan ahead for the visit.
“When the health department gets there, everything’s locked up,” state Sen. Sonny Borrelli said. “They’re basically walking into an empty room because they know when you’re coming.”
Borrelli, the prime sponsor of the bill, says that the marijuana industry should be held to the same standards as other companies. He says that anything from fast food restaurants to abortion clinics are able to undergo spot inspections whenever, but the marijuana industry is insulated from this same treatment.
Borrelli’s main concern is that many dispensaries have kitchens inside of them for making edibles, yet those kitchens are never adequately surveyed.
“They wanna be treated like a legitimate business, that’s fine let’s treat them like a legitimate business,” Borrelli said. “If you’re gonna call it a medicine, lets treat it like medicine.”
Borrelli says that, in theory, there’s nothing currently stopping the dispensaries from using harmful pesticides or any other chemicals during the cultivation of their plants. According to dispensary owner Rouben Beglarian, that isn’t necessarily the whole story.
“I can’t speak for the kitchens because I don’t have one, but as far as the pesticides and everything, I think they’re pretty strict,” Beglarian said. “They want us to post on our labels what’s in it.”
Beglarian owns the Tucson Saints Dispensary, also known as Southern Arizona Integrated Therapies, which he says is one of the oldest dispensaries in Arizona. Opened on Dec. 1, 2012, his shop doesn’t make any edibles themselves, buying them instead from other shops, however, they do extract concentrates from marijuana plants.
“The products that we grow, we are able to post them, but the products we get from other people, I can’t force them to do so,” Beglarian said about ingredient labels.
As Beglarian understood the current laws, he thought that the health department was required to tell them the month that they were going to perform an inspection, but not the specific day. Nonetheless, his experience running a dispensary taught him that any complaint made to the department results in an inspection almost immediately, something he’s experienced.
“I got nothing to worry about. It’s just not a concern to me,” Beglarian said. “I’m fine with that. They can come tomorrow if they wanted.”
Even though Beglarian said that he has nothing to worry about and believed there were already solid precautions in place, he understands the need for the new measures. Beglarian says that the health department currently has no choice but to trust the dispensaries word, adding that even if random inspections were a thing, he’s not sure how much they would learn from them.
“It should actually go through a process where, randomly, the health department can come in and test it to make sure it is what they say it is in there,” Christine Ricci said.
Ricci, 51, started using marijuana to curb her use of oxycodone after sustaining back and neck injuries years ago. She says that the use of medical marijuana was key in getting her off the notorious opioid.
“It’s great for pain management” she said about marijuana usage. “I can’t complain about that.”
In addition to her personal usage, Ricci employs it at her company, Bella Dog Psychology, where she works as a dog behaviorist. She says that marijuana products help to make the dogs more receptive to any training she gives them during their rehabilitation.
“I don’t eat anything from those places, but I can understand the health department wanting to oversee that,” Ricci said about dispensaries’ marijuana edibles. “They’re selling it to the public, its gotta be safe and sanitary.”
Ricci said that she’s never had any problems with the cleanliness of any Arizona dispensaries, but nonetheless thinks that it should be an industry regulated just as well as any other you’d come across, like the meat section in a grocery store.
“I don’t trust the government; I don’t trust the manufacturers of anything,” she said. “I want legitimate evidence that what I’m about to inhale, what I’m about to shove in my system, is exactly as it is stated.”
The bill has been passed by both the state House and Senate but not yet signed into law by Gov. Doug Ducey due to COVID-19 shifting legislative priorities in the state.