| When states with legal medical cannabis programs roll out adult-use sales, it is not uncommon for medical patients to fear getting lost in the shuffle, with long lines and product shortages often par for the course. As my home state of New Jersey prepped to launch its adult-use program (which it did April 21), that fear prompted some medical patients to “stock up on products” in advance. “Because of sales and events leading up to the first days of adult-use sales, a vast number of our medical patients had stocked up on products before the 21st …,” Curaleaf’s Stephanie Cunha, the company’s regional director of public relations, commented in a prepared statement to Cannabis Business Times. As one of the state’s 100,000-plus medical patients, I was among those who planned ahead to avoid having to return in the weeks following adult-use rollout. Ridiculously long lines had already been a norm at the Alternative Treatment Center (ATC, as New Jersey’s state-licensed medical dispensaries are called) I frequented in southern New Jersey in 2020 and much of 2021 (until another location opened nearby). With waiting rooms shutdown during COVID, patient numbers growing and limited ATCs throughout the state, it hadn’t been uncommon to wait an hour or more, outside, in the dead of winter, with lines that wrapped around the building. So, even though the state required that dispensaries offer “two patient-only hours per day” to ensure medical patients still had access to their medicine, as CBT Associate Editor Tony Lange reported, I wasn’t willing to risk having to face the mobs and product shortages many states encounter during rollout. Lange also reported on some state dispensaries’ struggle to delineate medical vs. adult-use sales: “… Five of the seven companies to launch adult-use retail operations on April 21 were later fined a combined $360,000 by the CRC for allegedly not honoring those medical-only hours … as reported by Bloomberg. The fines came at a rate of $10,000 per day for each day the alleged violations occurred from April 21 to April 29, the news outlet reported.” With $1.9 million in adult-use cannabis sales and reports of long lines on the first day of the adult-use rollout, I was glad I had stocked up in advance. And despite some dispensaries’ challenges ensuring no adult-use customers are being served during medical-only hours, I’ve also been happy to not only encounter no wait on my subsequent visits as a medical patient, but also to have access to some of my favorite products that are not on the adult-use menu at my ATC. Every state faces some hiccups with such a massive medical-to-adult-use expansion of its regulated cannabis program, but in the Garden State, I am at least not experiencing nor seeing reports of product shortages. Perhaps the delays in the rollout, at least for medical patients, were worth the wait. (As a side note, if you’re looking for insights into seamlessly expanding your dispensary from medical to adult-use, you may want to check out the session on this topic—featuring Erin Alexander, Cresco Labs; Leah Heise, Kearney; and Duke Rodriguez, Ultra Health—at Cannabis Conference 2022, Aug. 23-25, in Las Vegas.) -Noelle Skodzinski, Editorial Director | 