by


Guam - The Department of Public Health will be at the forefront when it comes to the implementation of medicinal marijuana on Guam. Director James Gillan is preparing for its implementation.


While two dozen states now allow for the use of medicinal marijuana, it's the state of Arizona that Gillan hopes to follow. "Because it works, it's very efficient he doesn't have a large bureaucracy, he doesn't have people going out inspecting all sorts of things, but it has a regulatory activity if people are not properly licensed and some of it is to the point when you're screening producers for any links to organized crime so we do a FBI background check on the producers," he explained.


Gillan recently returned from a trip to the Grand Canyon State, where he was able to meet with friend and Arizona Department of Health Services director Will Humble. Gillan says Arizona has a proven system that has generated $7 million in excess revenue for other health programs. "And he's offered any assistance that we require as far as even giving us the source codes to do the computer runs to print out the certification to come up with tamperproof ID cards," he said.


Gillan says he will try to emulate Arizona's web-based application system as well. "And what we'll try to do is link any physician who's willing to write a certification we'll do like the old days when you used to register your car online, you can actually get a printed registration, so we'll try to put a system together like that where a physician will submit a certification, it will reside in our web system and when the applicant applies, we can match that up," he said.


He adds part of the expense to copy the program will be incurred out of the $100,000 made available through the act. Meanwhile the main reason behind Gillan's trip to Arizona was to attend the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials annual winter meeting where coincidentally medicinal marijuana was part of the discussion.


"I think one of the best things about this collegial arrangement with ASTOL is we do a lot of sharing of information and a lot of sharing of resources the fact that will is going to give us thousands of dollars worth of what cost him a lot of money to put together we're going to get for free so that's the best price we're going to get when you put a program like this together we have no idea what the cost is going to be, so at least we know on this end, the regulatory end, the card distribution and the IT portion, all of that is going to be given to us," he shared.


In the meantime, Gillan says he is already working on a draft for the rules and regulations as part the medicinal marijuana implementation on Guam.