Bennabis Well being lately introduced that its medical hashish program is now out there to sufferers dwelling in New Mexico. The corporate has partnered with AltaVida Dispensary, positioned in Albuquerque, to assist help medical hashish sufferers, particularly with employees’ compensation circumstances involving a affected person searching for to make use of hashish as drugs for persistent ache.
“It is a tremendously thrilling step within the development of Bennabis Well being as a visionary firm clearing a path for many who can profit most from medical hashish the place protection isn’t in any other case out there,” stated Bennabis Well being president Don Parisi. “Opening our community in New Mexico with AltaVida helps us progress in our mission to realize medical hashish advantages throughout the nation.”
New Mexico’s Employees’ Compensation states that medical hashish can be utilized by an injured employee “when deemed ‘affordable and crucial care’ underneath the Workers’ Compensation Act.” Nevertheless, sufferers should pay out of pocket and are later reimbursed.
“In sure states like New Mexico and New Jersey, employees’ compensation claims circumstances can require medical marijuana prices be reimbursed by the service when it provides affordable and crucial remedy as an acceptable various to opioids,” a Bennabis Health press release states. “Nevertheless, in these circumstances the injured employee must pay out-of-pocket a considerable quantity monthly for his or her medical marijuana, after which search reimbursement from their payor.”
Bennabis Well being provides what they name a “layer of safety between the dispensary and the payor” by way of its membership program and a team of medical insurance and hashish business professionals. One in every of its founders, Anne M. Davis, initially found hashish as a remedy for her a number of sclerosis however her medical insurance didn’t cowl her change to medical hashish as a result of it’s a federally unlawful substance and Schedule I drug.
Earlier this yr in March, the corporate partnered with a New Jersey dispensary to supply comparable advantages previous to its enlargement into New Mexico.
Adult-use sales began in New Mexico on April 1, 2022, however the state has had its medical hashish program in place since 2010 (technically, its earliest cannabis-related laws was established in 2007, referred to as the Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act). Since then, state legislation has undergone a number of revisions, resembling addressing shortages of provide in 2018 by growing the plant cultivation restrict from 450 to 2,500. In 2019, the state expanded patient rights, and likewise added new qualifying situations for medical hashish use.
Most lately, the New Mexico Cannabis Control Division reported on gross sales for the month of November, which reveals a lower in medical hashish gross sales and a gentle enhance in adult-use sales. Medical hashish gross sales had been recorded at $14 million, which was $660,000 lower than was collected in October. Again in April 2022 when adult-use gross sales started, medical hashish gross sales had been recorded at $17 million.
As of Dec. 5, the state has additionally begun issuing medical hashish playing cards digitally.
On Dec. 6, the University of New Mexico (UNM) introduced that one in every of its engineering professors, Nathan Jackson, is a principal investigator on a undertaking that goals to create a method to make cannabis-based vaping safer. “Each vaping device capabilities by heating the liquid to better than 200 levels Celsius, which creates poisonous byproducts, which then enter the aerosol droplets which might be inhaled,” Jackson said. “Our expertise makes use of a distinct mechanism to create the aerosol that doesn’t require heating, so it may probably get rid of the dangerous byproducts.” The undertaking is named “Droplet and Metallic Particle Evaluation of ENDS,” which obtained a pilot award from the UNM Complete Most cancers Heart.
“Our expertise makes use of a silicon substrate, the place no metallic is involved with the liquid and it makes use of much less warmth, so probably we will scale back the well being dangers related to vaping,” Jackson defined. “Additionally, our expertise can generate micro-scale droplets as a substitute of the nano-scale droplets present in present vaping instruments, in order that signifies that droplets are much less more likely to enter the blood stream and cluster collectively, which may additionally lead to safer aerosols.”
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