HILO — Whoever is selected to open the state’s first medical marijuana dispensaries this summer should have plenty of business, state Department of Health records indicate.
At the end of February, there were more than 1,800 additional people registered as medical cannabis patients than in January 2015, the first month the DOH began overseeing the program. Broken down, that’s about a 16 percent increase between last month, when 13,244 unduplicated patients were registered, and 14 months ago, when the registry was about 11,402 people.
Between September and October alone, the number of patients increased by nearly 600 and in Hawaii County, which has more patients than anywhere else in the state, the number increased from 4,998 in October to 5,330 at the end of December.
“It’s exciting, but it’s also about time,” said Andrea Tischler, chairwoman of the Big Island chapter of Americans for Safe Access, after hearing about the increase.
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Hawaii Medical Marijuana Patients Increasing
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