A Juneau doctor is going into the marijuana business.
The owner of Juneau Urgent and Family Care has received local and state permits to grow, process and sell pot out of the same building as his clinic on Old Dairy Road.
Dr. Norvin Perez applied to the state board that licenses marijuana businesses late last year.
“I’m trying to think how to put this,” board member Mark Springer asked the doctor who was on the phone. “Have you ever suggested cannabis or cannabis products that some of your patients might want to consider?”
Yes, the doctor replied. But less than 10 times. There was concern on the board that the doctor’s medical clinic and pot business would be intertwined.
Not so, he said. The two might share the same address but they’d have separate entrances and keep different hours.
Still, some say confusion will be inevitable.
“You’re advertising this as a medical facility, this is urgent care, all of that’s advertised up front,” said Loren Jones, who sits on both the Alaska Marijuana Control Board and the Juneau Assembly. “Then you have this marijuana business in the back in which it will probably be minimally advertised, minimal signs, but people will still connect that medical practice to the marijuana.”
Despite his reservations, Jones voted to approve the doctor’s marijuana permits.
There wasn’t any legal reason not to.
“We have setbacks from churches, schools, correctional facilities, daycare if you want,” Jones said. “We don’t have any rules about setbacks away from medical facilities or doctors’ offices.”
Perez declined to be interviewed, as did his business manager, who said it would be premature to talk ahead of the business opening.
This won’t be the first Alaska doctor going into the marijuana business. But the arrangement is unique.
In Alaska, the regulated sale of marijuana is legal.
But retailers cannot make medical claims about their product.
Medical marijuana can be grown and supplied to patients, as long as no money changes hands.
“There is no medical market from a standpoint of anybody that can grow it and dispense it and then sell it to a patient — that market does not exist,” said Dr. Matthew Peterson, a practicing physician in Wasilla, who also owns a marijuana business.
Doctors are protected under the First Amendment to recommend pot to their patients. But medical ethics make it tricky if they’re also licensed to sell it.
“The advice that I was given is because I’m in the industry and I’m also a medical professional, that it would be a conflict of interest for me to put myself in a position where I am recommending medical marijuana,” Peterson said. “If I have a patient that’s wanting to do this I would not be the one that is making that recommendation.”
Then there’s the federal angle. The possession and sale of marijuana remains illegal under federal law.
The federal Drug Enforcement Administration controls licenses to the nation’s doctors to prescribe drugs.
Doctors have to tread carefully.
“Our DEA registration is the license that allows us to prescribe controlled substances,” Peterson said. “As a physician if you cannot prescribe controlled substances, then it kind of limits your medical practice. I don’t put myself in that conflict of interest.”
What does Alaska’s mainstream medical establishment think about physicians profiting off pot?
It’s hard to say: both the head of the Alaska State Medical Association and the state’s chief medical officer declined to comment.
The state’s marijuana industry is pleased that more doctors are entering the business.
“I think it’s great. Of course he’s going to need to maintain a strong wall between the two businesses, which I’m sure he will,” said Lacy Wilcox, a board member of the Alaska Marijuana Industry Association.
She also has a marijuana business in Juneau and said she’s glad more doctors are endorsing pot.
“We’re not of course permitted to talk about therapeutic benefits in Alaska,” she said. “But there’s a benefit and if he sees it and he sees it enough to enter into the business arena, then I think it’s a great evolution for our industry.”
It’s likely Perez’s combined clinic-and-pot shop will be scrutinized when it opens later this spring.
The Marijuana Control Office’s field agents have already cited businesses that claim cannabis is medicine.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified an Alaska Marijuana Control Board member and misnamed a business. Board member Mark Springer posed the quoted question about cannabis suggestions, not Peter Mlynarik. And the clinic business is named Juneau Urgent and Family Care, not Juneau Urgent Care & Family Medical Clinic.