Georgia Medical Cannabis Companies Offer New Level of Trust, Professionalism With Pharmacy Sales

Medical cannabis sales have been slow going in Georgia, which passed a law in 2015 to allow registered patients to possess low-THC oil but did not legalize commercial cannabis production and sales until four years later, in 2019.

After a tumultuous licensing process and a string of legal challenges that repeatedly stalled the program, regulators in September 2022 awarded two companies, Botanical Sciences and Trulieve, licenses to grow, manufacture and sell cannabis oil that contains no more than 5% THC. Each licensee can operate up to five retail locations and can also, in a first-of-its-kind sales model, dispense medical cannabis at independent pharmacies throughout the state.

RELATED: Georgia Begins Dispensing Medical Cannabis at Independent Pharmacies

Botanical Sciences, founded by Atlanta-based physician Dr. Robin Fowler, currently operates dispensaries in Marietta, Pooler and Stockbridge, and plans to open two additional retail locations in Chamblee and Augusta in the coming months. The company started manufacturing its products in early 2023 and opened its first dispensary in July.

Photo courtesy of Botanical Sciences

Gary Long, Botanical Sciences’ CEO, tells Cannabis Business Times that being able to provide the company’s products at independent pharmacies allows pharmacy operators to extend the trust they have already built with patients to the medical cannabis space.

“That’s the one thing that we love most about this, to be honest with you, is that their trust and professionalism is unmatched, quite honestly, outside of your physician,” Long says. “Each one of us, we respect and trust the word of our pharmacist, especially when we’re taking pharmaceuticals of any kind. … They will be very good at … providing great consultation to patients.”

Founded by a physician, the Botanical Sciences team is already familiar with health care. Long has spent his entire career in the health care industry, including most recently as the executive vice president and chief commercial officer of R1 RCM, which offers technology enabled revenue cycle management services to health care providers nationwide.

Long says the Botanical Sciences team has been having conversations with independent pharmacists across Georgia for the past 18 months.

To work with one of the state’s medical cannabis licensees, a pharmacy operator must apply with the Georgia Board of Pharmacy, pay an application fee, and undergo an audit conducted by the Georgia Department of Drugs and Narcotics, which ensures that the pharmacy meets certain requirements, such as being able to store medical cannabis products in a secure location.

Qualified pharmacies are then granted a license by the Board of Pharmacy and can begin dispensing medical cannabis to patients who have received a doctor’s recommendation and obtained an identification card through the Department of Public Health.

Medical cannabis transactions are conducted at a separate terminal at the pharmacy that connects to the dispensaries’ point-of-sale systems.

A patient can also have a one-on-one consultation with the pharmacist about medical cannabis and receive a recommendation on which type of product or dosage might work best for his or her particular condition.

Patients can pick up their medical cannabis products interchangeably at participating pharmacies or licensed dispensaries in the state.

“That’s the nice thing about the way Georgia’s got it set up, is it provides this incredibly vast network of places and locations where patients can actually receive product,” Long says. “In a state of 11 million people, you can’t get to nearly the entire population with five dispensaries—it’s virtually impossible. But through independent pharmacies located throughout the state, now we’re talking about equitable access to rural, urban [and] suburban locations everywhere across the state, almost instantaneously.”

Photo courtesy of Botanical Sciences

Botanical Sciences offers its full suite of products through participating pharmacies, including tinctures, topicals, capsules and lozenges. Georgia does not currently allow medical cannabis operators to provide smokable flower, vapes or edibles.

Distributing its products to the pharmacies has been one of Botanical Sciences’ biggest logistical challenges, Long says.

“From our perspective, we’ve got to enable the distribution of our product to now hundreds of potential locations around the state versus a handful,” he says. “While that’s not impossible by any stretch, because we’re accomplishing it today, it is something that I think we’re growing into together. And since there is no precedent for this occurring in other parts of the country, it’s not like there’s a model we can just go emulate of how this is working effectively in other places with cannabis. But I think we’re doing a pretty darn good job considering we just started rolling this out … last week, and over the next couple of weeks, we'll probably be in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 pharmacies dispensing, which is wonderful.”

RELATED: Botanical Sciences’ Pharmacy Partners First to Dispense Medical Cannabis Through Independent Pharmacies in Georgia

Botanical Sciences initially launched pharmacy sales through Omega Pharmacy, Robins Pharmacy and Tifton Drug Co.. The company has entered into agreements with roughly 140 total pharmacy partners.

“This has created momentum with the other pharmacy operators around the state that may not have been the early adopters of this,” Long says. “They’re now starting to reach out to us, saying, ‘Hey, I want to be a part of this, as well.’ So, it’s creating its own momentum to some extent, which is great, as well.”

Trulieve announced Oct. 31 that it had launched its first pharmacy sales at Riverside Pharmacy in Gainesville. A company spokesperson told CBT in an emailed statement that Trulieve has secured dispensation agreements with a number of Georgia’s more than 400 independent pharmacies and that the company is currently pursuing agreements with additional pharmacies in strategic locations throughout the state.

Photo courtesy of Trulieve

Trulieve’s partnering pharmacies will offer all the low-THC products under the company’s Momenta brand, including nasal sprays, tinctures, capsules and topicals, with troches—small, medicated lozenges—being added to the product lineup soon.

“Trulieve is proud to be part of the history being made in Georgia, the first state in the nation to allow pharmacies to dispense medical cannabis products,” the spokesperson tells CBT. “This move significantly increases patient access and helps pave the way for other states to find new and creative ways to make medical cannabis available.”

Long says allowing pharmacies to participate in medical cannabis sales also helps to normalize cannabis as medicine.

“It does legitimize this industry much more,” he says. “If you’re using a trusted delivery method to actually get products into the hands of patients—not that there’s anything wrong with a standalone dispensary—but I think about maybe my mother and your mother who wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable going into a dispensary. My mother’s 80; she’s not going to go into a dispensary, but she’ll be more than happy to go to a pharmacy to get product if she has a card. So, I think that’s where this is a game changer, quite honestly, not just in Georgia, but potentially serving as a model in other states.”

Trulieve representatives will visit partnering pharmacies to educate pharmacists on the company’s products, and the company’s spokesperson says that the separate point-of-sale hardware and software systems deployed in the pharmacies will ensure patients have a similar purchasing experience whether buying from a pharmacy or a dispensary.

Trulieve’s first five dispensaries are currently operational in Macon, Marietta, Newnan, Pooler and Evans. The company spokesperson says additional locations are planned as Georgia’s medical cannabis program grows, pending regulatory approval.

“Trulieve aims to provide medical patients in Georgia with access to high-quality medical cannabis products,” the spokesperson says. “As the program matures, we aim to foster greater acceptance and adoption of medical cannabis through education and awareness initiatives across the state.”

The Georgia Department of Public Health announced in late September that officials had overstated active patient numbers in the state, putting Trulieve’s expansion plans on hold for the time being. The department reported in July that roughly 30,600 active patients and 21,000 caregivers were registered, but as a result of “anomalies,” including patients with expired cards and patients who have died, for example, officials have since updated those numbers to 13,000 active patients and 1,200 caregivers.

According to state law, regulators can issue a sixth dispensary license per medical cannabis licensee when the registry reaches 25,000 patients and an additional retail license per licensee for every 10,000 patients added after that.

Long calls the department’s updated patient count “a bit of a curveball,” but says having pharmacies serving patients will only help to encourage more people to register with the program.

“The patient numbers are modest at best right now, but they seem to be growing,” Long says. “I think the availability of the product through pharmacies is probably the single best advertisement [for medical cannabis] that could have been accomplished. I think people aren’t necessarily going to respond to typical advertising in this regard, but when they hear that these types of products that are legal in our state and in 40 other states around the country and are available in your local pharmacy, it legitimizes. It raises its awareness. I think, by default, it will create the momentum that we’ve all been seeking, which is to increase these numbers of patients. They're modest relative to what we believe will eventually be in the state, but it’s early days. We’re very hopeful for the fact that it will grow rapidly as we go into the next year.”

Looking ahead, Long says the Botanical Sciences team has its hands full with opening its final two dispensaries and continuing to roll out partnerships with pharmacies.

“It’s one thing to establish a partnership relationship with all these pharmacy operators, but our intent is to make them all very successful at doing this,” he says. “And in turn, because they will have success, the patients will have access and our company will also be part of that nice wave of rollout that’s going to be going on over the next several months. We’re really just focused on enabling our dispensaries to be operational and to make all these pharmacy partners of ours functional and able to actually dispense products. And if we do that and nothing else, we’ll be very successful going into the new year.”