West Virginia’s High Medical Cannabis Prices Push Patients To Buy Recreational Marijuana In Neighboring States

*“West Virginians know full well that it is not legal to cross state lines
with cannabis. But they’re doing it anyway.”*

*By Nicole Blevins, Mountain State Spotlight*

*This story was originally published by Mountain State Spotlight. Get
stories like this delivered to your email inbox once a week; sign up for
the free newsletter at https://mountainstatespotlight.org/newsletter.*

The smell of sausage frying in a pan filled Deborah Boggs’s home when her
husband Barry cooked breakfast, but it repelled her from eating for hours.

Deborah, 48, has lived for over 20 years with Crohn’s disease, a chronic
condition causing severe inflammation in her stomach and requires regular
medication.

Medical cannabis lessens her symptoms. Within 45 minutes, the nausea
subsides, and she is able to eat a full meal. The tension and pain in her
body eases.

But to buy cannabis, she has to drive an hour from her house in Roane
County. Her only form of income is a monthly Social Security payment.

“Sometimes I don’t have the gas money to get there,” she said.

Deborah isn’t alone. West Virginia patients are struggling to afford
medical cannabis.

Neighboring states have legalized recreational use in recent years,
creating larger markets and cheaper prices. In West Virginia, lawmakers
have only allowed the medical sale of cannabis, fostering an industry with
limited patient access and high costs.

Around 35,000 West Virginians have a medical cannabis card. Patient growth
has plateaued in the last six months, according to state data.

West Virginia is one of the poorest states in the nation and has the
highest rate of residents living with multiple chronic illnesses and on
Social Security or disability programs. The medical cannabis program was
created to offer an effective, alternative treatment recommended by
licensed physicians for severe and chronic conditions.

Cannabis is still illegal on the federal level. At the same time, a
patchwork of state laws governs who can buy and sell it for medical and
recreational purposes.

*Cannabis prices in West Virginia are driving patients to other states*

Rusty Williams, advocacy director at the ACLU of West Virginia, spent years
in the Capitol pushing for a medical cannabis program before it was
legalized in 2017.

Since then, Williams has served as the patient advocate on the program’s
advisory board. He said patients drive to other states for cheaper products
and edibles, which are illegal in West Virginia.

“West Virginians know full well that it is not legal to cross state lines
with cannabis,” he said. “But they’re doing it anyway.”

Cannabis flower is the most popular product in West Virginia, followed by
vape cartridges, which contain cannabis oil that is vaporized when
inhaling. A vape cartridge listed for $60 in West Virginia was available
for just $20 in Ohio for anyone over 21 years old, he said.

“Patients are absolutely getting hosed here in West Virginia,” he said.

Over the last year, vapes have been more expensive in West Virginia than
Ohio or Maryland, neighboring states that have legalized recreational use.
Flower is cheaper in Ohio and slightly more expensive in Maryland,
according to state price data.

For both products, West Virginia prices are more than double the cost in
Michigan.

Harold Tolbert, a Fayette County resident who previously lived in Michigan,
uses medical cannabis instead of pain medications for a neck injury from
whitewater rafting.

Spending $50 on cannabis bought him a month’s worth in Michigan, but only a
week’s worth in West Virginia.

“You’ve got to have a six-figure job to be able to afford your medicine
comfortably down here,” he said.

Each state has its own closed market because shipping products across state
lines is illegal, said Steve Mazeika, spokesperson for Verano, a cannabis
company with dispensaries in multiple states. Prices are widely set by
supply and demand factors, as well as state regulations, Mazeika said.

Michigan’s law allows for unlimited licenses across the industry, resulting
in higher supply than demand and ultimately driving prices to be far
cheaper than the rest of the country, he said.

*Why are prices higher in West Virginia?*

Matthew Coffman, regional vice president of Kanacare, a cannabis company
with dispensaries in Charleston, Fairmont and Parkersburg, said West
Virginia’s program is not built to sustain companies selling incredibly
cheap products.

The state’s program doesn’t allow outdoor growing, so the overhead costs
for things like operating a greenhouse or powering grow lamps drives up
prices.

Dispensaries also pay a 10 percent tax on sales, cutting into their profit,
and are not subject to tax exemptions due to the federal status of
marijuana.

A Mountain State Spotlight investigation found that the West Virginia
medical cannabis program has accumulated roughly $34 million from the taxes
paid by dispensaries, but the money hasn’t been spent.

Some patients don’t initially understand that health insurance doesn’t
cover medical cannabis, because the drug is illegal on the federal level,
said Megan Mullins, a dispensary employee.

She said she does her best to point low-income patients toward product
sales and help them use their loyalty points, but it’s only a short-term
solution.

“We really just try to go with what they can afford and how they like it,”
she said.

George Booth, a disabled veteran in Berkeley County, uses medical cannabis
for relief from chronic pain. He can hardly move without it.

“Cannabis has kind of been a godsend,” he said.

Now on disability leave and with his wife facing financial instability from
the recent shutdown as a government worker, he struggled to afford the
amount of product he typically purchased.

And although his finances were secure most of his life, he said he hopes
the market will open to lower prices for medical patients to enjoy. Right
now, he pays $70 for a gram of a concentrated product.

“That is really expensive,” he said.

Country Grown dispensaries offer veteran, senior and various product
discounts to account for West Virginians’ income. Josh Chaffin, director of
retail operations at Harvest Care Medical, the West Virginia-based parent
company of Country Grown, said he is aware of the pressures many patients
face from high prices.

But his goal, along with many others in the state, is to expand West
Virginia’s medical cannabis program to a recreational-use market. He said
it would broaden patient access by allowing edibles and different brands of
products. It could also ease the costs for patients who pay over $100 to
get or renew a medical card each year.

“If they can go across the border and obtain a wider selection of products,
why would they pay to get their medical cannabis card in West Virginia?” he
said.

*How are state officials addressing patients’ complaints?*

Under state medical cannabis law, the Department of Health can cap prices
for six months if it determines costs to be excessive or unreasonable. But
it hasn’t.

“Pricing is always a concern so that patients are able to obtain products
at a reasonable price,” said Gailyn Markham, a spokesperson for the state
Department of Health, which includes the Office of Medical Cannabis.

State officials don’t see a large difference in prices compared to other
states and have not considered implementing price caps, Markham said.

Since the first dispensary opened in 2021, lawmakers have not changed or
expanded the Medical Cannabis Act. Patients have requested legalizing
edibles, widening qualifying conditions and growing cannabis for personal
use, said Williams, the patient advocate.

“That is all due to the lack of political will,” he said.

For patients like Deborah, medical cannabis is a necessity. She said it’s
not about a “high,” but a return to normal function.

On the living room wall in her mother-in-law’s home, a photo from her
wedding day with Barry hangs nestled among family portraits.

Barry pointed to it, remembering she weighed a mere 97 pounds from not
eating. He looks at her now, 21 years later, a fuller version of herself
after using medical cannabis.

“We’re poor. We can only afford so much,” he said. “I wish they could do a
little more along those lines, because it is a medicine.”

*This article first appeared on Mountain State Spotlight and is republished
here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
License.*

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