Medical marijuana sales from Aug. 21 through Wednesday ticked up compared to the last reporting period, according to the sales report the state revenue agency released Friday.

Daily sales during the 20-day period that ended Wednesday were $600,000 on average. The daily sales average during the 16-day reporting period that ended Aug. 20 was $592,000. The Department of Finance and Administration said the 29 dispensaries in operation during the most recent reporting period averaged $20,698 in daily sales.

Since Arkansas voters passed the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment in 2016, more than 72,500 Arkansans have obtained Medical Marijuana Prescription Cards in order to obtain products to treat the 18 qualifying conditions.

These Arkansans include a sleepless cancer survivor, a 10-year-old epileptic child with seizures and a combat veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder. Here are the stories of the conditions that led them to pursue medical marijuana as a treatment and their experiences using the drug.

The state’s monthly report shows medical marijuana sales remain strong in Arkansas, which has almost 76,000 people with cards allowing them to purchase the product.

Since legal sales began in May 2019, some 20,000 pounds of cannabis have been sold, grossing $131 million. Sales in the last two weeks have averaged $590,000 daily, according to a report from Scott Hardin at the Department of Finance and Administration.

Said Hardin:

A total of 28 dispensaries are serving patients with nine remaining that are working toward opening. Ten of the 28 in operation have sold more than 1,000 pounds.

Earlier this year, the Arkansas Department of Health suspended expiration dates on medical marijuana registry cards due to the COVID-19 public health emergency. This allowed individuals to temporarily use their cards past the expiration date written on their card.

This temporary extension will end on September 30, 2020. Cards with an expiration date on or before September 30, 2020, will expire on September 30, 2020.

Cardholders need to submit a renewal application by September 11, 2020, to allow time for processing. Cards with an expiration date after September 30, 2020, will expire on the date written on the card.

There are several questions in both Northwest Arkansas and the River Valley regarding medical marijuana dispensaries and the struggle to meet the needs of Arkansans.

Patient Carla Thompson says if medical marijuana doesn’t become more available in Arkansas she may have to go to Oklahoma.

“Like right now I’m almost out so tomorrow I will probably have to go online and search around and try to find somewhere that has something,” Thompson said.

Thompson and many other patients say finding access to the medicine they need is almost impossible. She says her local dispensary, Fort Cannabis Company, struggles to keep its shelves full of any strain.

“Mostly from just anything we ran completely out of flower for two weeks now,” said Fort Cannabis Manager Alisha.

As Arkansas’ medical marijuana industry blossoms, with the state issuing more licenses for cultivation centers and dispensaries to serve more than 60,000 authorized Arkansas patients, cultivators are pushing back against a narrative that short wholesale supplies have kept prices too high for some patients to buy.

“The argument for issuing additional grow licenses was based on the idea that cultivators charge too much for cannabis,” one grow operation executive told Arkansas Business. “They said basically that there’s no supply and patients can’t get their medicine. That’s simply not true. We welcome competition and the issuing of new licenses, but not under a false premise.”

A group pushing to place a recreational marijuana amendment on the November ballot is breathing a sigh of relief following an Arkansas Supreme Court ruling allowing them to collect signatures electronically.

rkansas’ medical marijuana sales have increased significantly since March 1 and there is a consensus as to why: COVID-19.

The state of Arkansas reported Tuesday (May 12) that overall sales of medical cannabis recently surpassed $75 million and 12,000 pounds since the first dispensary opened a year ago in May 2019.

Roughly 40% of overall sales have occurred since March 1, 2020. Over the past two-and-a-half months, medical marijuana dispensaries have sold $29.92 million of products.

Arkansas Marijuana Card, a network of clinics specializing in providing evaluations and recommendations to patients seeking treatment with medical marijuana, announced recently they will begin conducting patient evaluations through telemedicine.

The announcement comes just days after the Arkansas Department of Health authorized emergency measures expanding the allowable uses of telemedicine services in an effort to stem the spread of COVID-19.

Farmers in Arkansas hoping to cash in on the state’s newly legal crop — industrial hemp, a variety of the cannabis plant low in intoxicants — are finding it’s tougher than they expected. 

“I think a lot of people came into this program expecting to make the big bucks, or save the family farm, and we’re kind of learning that that’s not the case,” Caleb Allen, the coordinator of the Arkansas Department of Agriculture’s industrial hemp research program, told the Arkansas Times in February. “Maybe 20 or 30 years in the future, who knows, but it’s just too new right now to really say, ‘Yes, this is a definite crop that will save our farm.’ It’s a lot of hard work.”