Nearly a year after medical marijuana moved from the seed to the shelves at nine pharmacies in Louisiana, there is a second player in a market that is about to get a larger group of patients suffering from a wide range of medical conditions.
University of the South medical marijuana licensee Ilera Holistic Healthcare shipped its first topical tinctures and creams to pharmacies this month, joining LSU licensee Wellcana Group, which put its first tinctures on the shelves last August.
Two weeks after Wellcana hit the retail market last year, nearly 5,000 patients entered the program, and 1,500 received the drug at prices between $ 80 and $ 200 to treat just a dozen medical conditions.
Ilera is adding competition to a market in which pharmacies have struggled with high wholesale prices and low profit margins, while patients have complained of unaffordable therapy that has slowed their use.
Wellcana has lowered its prices, although it has not been disclosed for competitive reasons, twice in recent months to the level of a much more mature cannabis market, and its profit margin for now is “very thin,” authorities said. Metropolitan areas of the state also discounted their prices earlier this year, realizing that many patients were not returning due to cost.
The cost is increased in part by federal limitations on tax cancellations common to retailers but not available to pharmacies because the federal government considers marijuana illegal. For that same reason, insurance companies generally don’t cover the costs of medical marijuana for patients.
“There are many of our patients who have tried the drug, but the reason they didn’t continue was the price …,” said H&W dispensary owner Henry Ruston, after lowering prices earlier this year. “We cannot allow cancer patients to not receive this because they cannot afford the drug.”
The medical marijuana tinctures at H&W Dispensary were priced between $ 90 and $ 200, depending on the concentration, and were reduced to $ 65 per tincture sold in 30-milliliter bottles. Products under $ 100 are now expected to become the norm, Ruston said.
Ruston has now purchased some of Ilera’s THC products in addition to Wellcana’s.
“The more products that are added, the cheaper the cost and the easier access for patients,” said Ruston. “One of the biggest challenges we had was changing the stigma of marijuana. We had a lot of pain patients and they were thinking of marijuana like smoking and whatnot, but this is something that just gets under your tongue.”
In addition to Ilera adding competition to Wellcana, state lawmakers have given the two companies and nine state-licensed pharmacies a much broader patient base. The drug can only be used to treat cancer, AIDS, cachexia or wasting syndrome, seizure disorders, epilepsy, spasticity, Crohn’s disease, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, muscle spasms. severe, PTSD, Parkinson’s, certain people with autism spectrum disorder and intractable pain
About a quarter of patients have never tried medical marijuana before, and about 15% are replacing opioids with cannabis, according to a state survey. The three most common conditions that are treated are intractable pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, and cancer.
Starting August 1, doctors can recommend marijuana to patients for any condition they consider “debilitating for an individual patient and qualified” to treat. Additionally, physicians should only be in “good standing” with the Board of Medical Examiners, rather than having to obtain a special license.
The legislation “increases patient access so they can see a doctor they know,” said John Davis, Wellcana’s executive director. “This eliminates the barriers and narrow swimming lanes that have restricted the Louisiana market,” he said.
Davis has long described the industry as slow and has even slowed some of the production by freezing mature plant buds to keep dye batches fresh.
Between August and December, there were only 4,350 patients in the state’s fledgling program, and fewer than 200 participating physicians statewide.
The Marijuana Policy Project has estimated that the medical marijuana program in Louisiana could grow to more than 100,000 patients when mature. Common sense NOLA, an advocate of medical marijuana, has estimatedre the potential group of patients is more like 65,000 to 75,000 across the state, if the raw cannabis flower is legalized.
While that hasn’t happened, the state’s two medical marijuana growers are turning the plants they grow into an ever-growing variety of products, and both are planning larger operations that also include hemp-derived CBD products.
While Wellcana has promoted different potencies of marijuana’s THC tinctures in a variety of flavors to treat all conditions, Ilera Holistic’s strategy is to promote specific formulations for some disorders such as autism or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Wellcana produced 600 pounds of dried cannabis flower in 2019. That dried flower was extracted and mixed with oil to produce 18,959 bottles of tincture, of which 16,524 were sold at wholesale prices in pharmacies.
Davis has said Wellcana’s The strategy since the program began has been to meet customer demand for tinctures and to continue developing other methods such as edible chews, under-tongue strips, metered-dose inhalers, and topical creams. The company also quietly launched some CBD products derived from hemp in recent months, which are sold on the counter in medical marijuana pharmacies.
Wellcana hopes to launch new medical marijuana products in August, such as oral strips, and a new concentrate where patients can add extract to food, which is more similar to what customers would do with the raw flower.
“No one is going to say that our products are unaffordable,” Davis said.
Wellcana’s Baton Rouge facility has the capacity to grow hundreds of plants, and has been planning a larger plant-growing operation that has been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Ilera’s temporary facility in Baton Rouge had about 3,789 plants to harvest, according to state records, and has almost completed a new building with a capacity of tens of thousands of plants. Ilera Holistic Healthcare has promised very affordable prices and believes that a higher volume operation can support such a decision.
“I was also concerned about (the high prices),” he said. Chanda Macais, Director of Ilera Holistic health. “Through our experiences in other markets, we were able to make sure that the technology at our plant has been superior because that is the barrier that large patient databases can normally provide. We wanted to make sure we had supplies available to everyone.”
Ilera has plans to build and operate an outdoor greenhouse, where medical marijuana will be grown using sunlight instead of lamps in a windowless facility.
Ilera Holistic also hopes to buy hemp from local farmers and has been selling CBD products derived from hemp since January.
Wellcana’s plans for a larger marijuana growing facility are at an undisclosed location, likely near Lafayette, which would be a hub for collecting and processing hemp grown by area farmers. That will support the production of CBD, cannabidiol, products the company has been developing from hemp. CBD oils derived from hemp do not contain significant amounts of THC and can be legally sold by retailers.
The federal and state government set the stage last year for growing hemp, a strain of the cannabis sativa plant and a non-psychoactive cousin of marijuana, in Louisiana.
