BOSTON (WHDH) - He’s a combat veteran who completed dozens of missions in Iraq. His newest mission is delivering medical marijuana in Boston, and he let 7News come along.
We uncovered an organized, underground marijuana delivery network that few people know about. It’s a potentially risky route for the man who calls himself “Chief.”
“We’re going to a patient-member’s home”, he says. “Somewhere we’ve been many times before. She’s a nice friend and she appreciates what we do.”
Chief showed us proof he’s allowed to possess and use marijuana for medical purposes. He’s also a registered as a marijuana caregiver – but exactly what that means is a little hazy. In Massachusetts, a caregiver is allowed by law to buy, grow and assist a single patient with medical marijuana. That means Chief is only allowed to deliver the drug to the one person he’s specifically authorized to help as a caregiver.
“You’re a caregiver?” we ask.
He replies, “I am a caregiver as well, yes.”
We press a bit more as we get to our stop. “But the person we’re delivering to; you’re not her caregiver?”
“No.” he admits.
“Michelle” (not her real name) has suffered for years with serious health issues, now only finding relief with medical marijuana.
“I have fibromyalgia,” she says.
“I was up to fourteen medications. Now I’m up to five meds, just five, since I’ve been on the cannabis.”
She tells us her doctors helped her get certified to use medical marijuana, but that she can’t get to a dispensary to pick it up and needs delivery.
“I need their services,” she says. “It’s very important to me because I don’t have a car and can’t drive right now.”
But some say this kind of delivery is dangerous.
Nicole Snow is an advocate for medical marijuana. She says the state regulations leave too much open for interpretation.
“It’s unsafe, I think it’s a public safety issue” she says. “There’s a lot of confusion around the caregiver regulation. It’s left up for complete interpretation.”
To clear it up, we went straight to the health commissioner, whose job it is to make sure the state’s medical marijuana rules are being followed, and we asked her if what Chief is doing is legal.
“Caregivers cannot sell or profit from dispensing the medical marijuana, and if we were to hear of a case of a caregiver going outside of those parameters, we would of course investigate that.”
Chief says he doesn’t get paid for making deliveries. He believes what he is doing is perfectly legal and morally right.
“Once you say it’s medicine, how can you deny it to people?” he asks. “I really don’t understand that.”
Right now thirty thousand people in the state of Massachusetts have been approved to receive medical marijuana, but there are only seven open dispensaries in the state.
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