With legal cannabis medicine prices stabilizing in Oklahoma dispensaries, the black market dealers are seeing the 'writing on the wall'.
  In states where patients have to turn to the cartels for cannabis medicine, the prices are commonly over $300 per ounce for medium/high quality raw dried flower buds.
  But the legal dispensaries which have been opening all over the Sooner State, prices and supply have created market conditions which allow licensed patients to safely and legally attain tested cannabis medicine at prices of around $200-300 per ounce.
  At this rate it makes little sense for a patient not to get a medical consultation and pay the $100 for a medical license. It's almost like getting a Sam's Club card. You pay a membership fee up front, but you expect to recoup that expense through lower priced products.  It's as though the state created a "Sam's Club" for naturopathic medicines.
  Last December, the wholesale prices for legal cannabis was over $300 per ounce. Now it is half that.

  On Tuesday, Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a new law into immediate effect. It's Emergency clause requires the OMMA to accept a medical recommendation from any MD or DO physician whose license is in good standing with the State of Oklahoma. The physician no longer is required to be a "board certified specialist" in addition to being a general practitioner.
  The impact is huge for patients who want to remain in the care of their own local clinic. It will allow them to seek the new recommendation at any follow-up, med check, or annual physical exam.  Until now the patients have had to go hunt down a willing physician who does not know anything about their complex health condition. It also puts an additional financial burden on patients who may be battling cancer, mental illness, or other serious conditions. But this law doesn't mean their current physician will be willing to recommend cannabis treatments for them or any of their patients. Some physicians simply won't recommend any treatment that they have not been sufficiently trained to utilize in the care of patients.
  The new law's author, Senator Rob Standridge, (R-Norman) is a pharmacist who initially opposed the SQ788 initiative, but he's seen firsthand the impact that cannabis meds can have for end-of-life care and alleviating severe pain while avoiding opiates. 
  Other major changes to medical marijuana law will go into effect 90 days after the legislature's May adjournment.

  Over the past few months, the OMMA has been sinking further under a flood of applications, but lacking the proper appropriations from the legislature, in order to hire permanent staff. They relied on temporary staffing contractors and had to devote more time to training.
 But in the run-up to Easter weekend, a major accomplishment was achieved. Over 10,000 new licenses were issued, eclipsing the previous record of 5,000+.
  Statutes require the OMMA to issue a license within 14 days, unless a known problem exists in the forms submitted online. But the OMMA's weekly tweets indicated that they had a typical backlog of about 12,000, either rejected or awaiting action. Now that backlog is around 7,000.
  Some of those are likely to be from patients who have given up or have deceased. But many more are forms which just needed additional clarification or documentation. And it's likely that every application sits en queue for over a week before the staff even gets to a first review.

  Meet Scott Biggs, the former state representative who rose to chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee, and then thwarted the will of the vast majority of legislators and the governor's office, when he refused to allow any criminal justice reform bills, thus keeping thousands more citizens going to state prisons rather than diversions into drug rehab, psychiatric intervention, and alternative sentencing.
  His obstructions went on for years, forcing citizens to take up several initiative petitions, and spending thousands of private funds to institute these laws without the legislature's obstructions. SQ 780, 781, & 788 all became law by going around Rep. Scott Biggs.
  Now Biggs is in charge of state agricultural services and overseeing several millions in federal dollars for farm programs.
  In this latest capacity he is being sued by a large group of farmers for illegal threats and other intimidations, while lying to the farmers about the availability of participating in the new industrial Hemp farming projects.  The Oklahoman delves further into the story.
  Hemp is valued for over-the-counter homeopathic medicines. the fiber is used in textiles.  ​Oklahoma can now open a legal agricultural production which has been very lucrative in a few other states.

  As is their weekly habit, the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority posted the summary numbers from the previous week's paperwork. This week showed a continuity of what we've known since the beginning of February.  Each week we add more than 5000 new licensed patients to our state rolls. Last August the top leadership of the new agency told our legislators that we would likely have about 80,000 total business and patient licenses by the next August.  Well, that number was wildly lower than the reality we see at this point. They based their numbers off of Arizona and perhaps other states whom the regarded as similar in statute to our SQ788.

  But Oklahomans have a passion for living free and independently. As the research data and anecdotal realities continue to come in, we see 4 major groups of patients with very serious or chronic conditions are now turning to Cannabis as the safest and/or most effective means of alleviating their suffering and restoring their quality of life. 
  Navy Veteran, Cody Barlow, have a very simple and powerful testimony to the legislature. Listen to his success story, here.

  Well,  it seems the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana reforms are here to stay. We're on course to more than double the projections of the Oklahoma Dept of Health in the number of licensees for the first year.  Tax collections are now already over $1 million per month, according to Oklahoma Tax Commission reports.
   Despite the prudish rejection of the 'big pharma' sycophants in the medical society and the bigoted disparagements of the prosecution industry; most every neighborhood in the state now has legal medical patients getting improved health and a more tolerable lifestyle, with safe use of cannabis medicines.
  The 57th Oklahoma legislature has to be watching this development with some sense of astonishment. While the state's tax collections are booming, the sociological doomsday predictions are AWOL. 
  We see more bitterness among the entrenched medical society than celebration for the patients who finally got off opiates and found a safer & more effective pain relief.
  We see more pharmacological skepticism about chemotherapy success with the anti-nausea treatment of cannabis, than hope for survival. 
  We see more fear from the prosecutors than relief, that PTSD sufferers have found calmness from their panic attacks and flashbacks.

 On August 8th of 2018, the top officials of the Oklahoma Health Dept. told the legislature that they expected 80,000 total applications in the first year of Medical Marijuana. They further elaborated that 2000 of them would be for commercial businesses (MMBs).  That was then. This is now. ​

​ The projections were made by dept. analyst, Buffy Heater, in the context of agency funding, and if fees would cover the cost of the function. Here's the video of that event.