"The IT aspect of medical marijuana is only just being approached," says John Lee, founder of Boyes Hot Springs, Calif.-based Plainview Systems, a new online service that allows qualified patients to "create virtual collectives and, through those collectives, buy, sell and trade marijuana goods, products and services."
In the wake of Proposition 215 and SB420 in California, medical marijuana has been big business in California – and is poised to make similar waves in states from Maine to Hawaii.
Though medicinal pot is a $2 billion business in California, “services are lacking to help legitimize and support businesses in this industry," Lee has said. "Until now, the medical marijuana community has been challenged by inconsistent supply channels, untraceable cash transactions, complex compliance issues and loss of state and municipal revenue streams."
PlainView, says Lee – a veteran of tech companies such as Apple and Sun Microsystems – was founded in order to help "solve those supply chain problems, whereby the dispensary owners had a difficult time with validation or proving that the supply they were getting from their wholesalers was going directly to patients."
PlainView's Compassionate Care Marketplace is the first such technology in the country, providing a Web-based business-to-business exchange for licensed providers’ medical marijuana products, supplies and services to connect with patients in a secure manner.
Its billing system, which is integrated with popular consumer accounting software, coupled with inventory and transactions record-keeping capabilities, are not only in full compliance with state and local laws, says Lee, but they help ensure "the fiduciary obligation of collectives and dispensaries: that is, to make sure they're meeting their responsibilities to the state or municipality with regards to tax collection."
Moreover, the system means prices for patients that "are anywhere between 20 and 50 percent cheaper than what a comparable dispensary would charge."
Patients can join the marketplace for free. All that's required is to be a registered medical marijuana patient, with a valid license. For wholesalers, there is a nominal subscription fee.
Lee makes clear that this secure and encrypted system is "not an eBay for weed."
"Our motto is ‘Making Medical Marijuana Transparent,’" he says. "We're trying to get people out of the shadows, give them a compliant structure, and allow patients to benefit by getting high-quality medical marijuana products at very reasonable and often discounted rates."
Cannabis has long been stigmatized by its illegality, he adds, and the challenge, as medical marijuana becomes more and more widespread, and "more in the mainstream," is to change the way it is accessed by the patient so "there is full accountability and transparency."
And there are plenty of opportunities for other vendors in this growing market, Lee says, especially around "specification and testing – quality control, and branding around quality control."
Companies that can put a trusted imprimatur on a medicinal product, ensuring that it's cured properly and free of pathogens and mold, could do well, Lee says.
"Right now it's kind of all over the board. With greater quality controls you'd be able to identify dosing properties: 'If I ingest x amount of it, I can expect this effect from it.'"
Those opportunities," he says, "are going to be really big business. I envision more and more companies coming in and delivering state-of-the-art 21st century solutions."
And companies are indeed starting to leap into that void – such as Foothill Ranch, Calif.-based Medical Marijuana, Inc., which was founded in March 2009 and specializes in offering business management solutions for co-ops, collectives and dispensaries and tax oversight and collection solutions to all levels of government.
"With our fully scalable, robust processing platform, we are able to meet the most stringent requirements of any government agency requesting our system for their municipalities,” said Charles Larsen, the company's president. Medical Marijuana, Inc. also plans soon to provide testing and gradation solutions "to establish and maintain high-level quality control of potency, strain and contaminants."
Another emerging player is Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Cannabis Science, Inc., which was founded last year by Robert Melameade, the former chair of the University of Colorado biology department, and Richard Cowan, former CEO of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). It "works with world authorities on phytocannabinoid science targeting critical illnesses, working to develop, produce, and commercialize phytocannabinoid-based pharmaceutical products."
"Obviously, we are operating in an area where the laws are evolving very rapidly," said Melameade, the company's president and CEO, this past fall as he announced the hiring of several attorneys to its advisory board to help Cannabis Science avail itself of "complex and evolving opportunities."
"We are ramping up pretty fast," adds the firm's CFO, Richard Cowan.
Still, says Lee the medical marijuana movement is in its infancy – and its IT infrastructure so far reflects that. Very few dispensaries even have an online presence, he notes. "I still think there's a long way to go."
