Inside the Professional Dispensaries of Illinois office in Buffalo Grove on a weekday earlier in January, Joseph Friedman assisted a man whose elderly mother was considering medical marijuana for the first time, explaining the different options and its effects.
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Meanwhile, another customer buzzed in and out of the lobby to pick up her newest shipment of medication before quickly exiting.
Even on weekdays, the scene inside the medical marijuana dispensary is much more crowded than when the business first opened in the final weeks of 2015. Friedman said more are beginning to consider the budding medical marijuana industry in Illinois as an effective way to relieve pain and other ailments.
“It’s just overwhelming,” Friedman said of his start in the medical marijuana business. “But every day is an adventure.”
Since the first dispensaries opened in Illinois in early November of 2015, the first full year of operation for many dispensary owners involved numerous ups and downs, according to owners in the Lake County area and industry experts.
Dispensary owners have said they’ve had to overcome the stigma related to marijuana especially when dealing with government regulators and banking institutions hesitant to finance businesses in the industry.
The federal government still considers marijuana illegal even as some state legislatures debate legalizing the drug for medical and recreational use.
This past November, voters in four states approved measures to allow recreational use of marijuana while four other states voted to legalize marijuana for medical use, according to NORML, a marijuana advocacy group.
Patients in Illinois also were slow to embrace the statewide medical marijuana pilot program in the initial months of 2016, dispensary owners said. The dynamics created financing challenges as dispensaries worked to develop a base of customers throughout 2016.
“We had some very slow days,” Mahja Sulemanjee, community outreach director for Greenhouse, said of the early months after opening a Deerfield dispensary in late 2015.
The Deerfield office served about 50 patients at the start of 2016, he said. Greenhouse’s Deerfield location, along with two others in Morris and Mokena, now works with about 1,000 patients total, Sulemanjee said.
At Professional Dispensaries of Illinois in Buffalo Grove, the dispensary went from having 19 patients at the start of 2016 to servicing about 300 patients by the end of the year, Friedman said.
Statewide after a slow start, the medical marijuana program grew steadily during each month despite a relatively small number of patients.
At the end of 2016, about 14,770 patients in Illinois qualified for the program and spent about $36.27 million throughout the year at dispensaries, according to state figures. To begin 2016, about 4,000 patients were approved for the pilot program.
Despite retail sales totaling multi-million dollars at all Illinois dispensaries, both Professional Dispensaries of Illinois and Greenhouse reported losing money in 2016 after a slow start to the year also marked by difficult interactions with banks, both Friedman and Sulemanjee said.
Both dispensaries had challenges setting up bank accounts for the businesses before finding the downstate Bank of Springfield, which handles accounts for numerous dispensaries in Illinois, according to Friedman and Sulemanjee.
Since the federal government considers marijuana illegal, banks under the oversight of the FDIC generally haven’t wanted to work with businesses in the medical marijuana industry, Friedman said.
“Banks have always had concerns about dealing with products that are against federal law,” he said.
Professional Dispensaries of Illinois also routinely updates its bank about its business. The Buffalo Grove dispensary sends two to three reports every week to the Bank of Springfield, detailing recent transactions and the amount of marijuana the business has in stock, Friedman said.
The challenges with banks and drawing in patients are some of the more common issues dispensaries throughout Illinois had to deal with in 2016, said Ali Nagib, assistant director of the Illinois chapter of NORML.
But there also has been few overt problems since the pilot program in Illinois launched.
Police have said they haven’t seen any significant issues with dispensaries and not a single patient has had his or her license rescinded for trying to use the marijuana for illegal purposes, according to a baiduhai report this past November.
In Buffalo Grove, Village President Beverly Sussman recently said police also haven’t had any issues with the local dispensary.
Like with any startup industry, the first dispensaries that opened up Illinois have to navigate an unfamiliar landscape but in a more challenging environment since marijuana long has been considered illegal, Nagib said.
But the businesses have positioned themselves well enough in 2016 for future success while advocacy groups like NORML work with state lawmakers to advance other marijuana proposals, he said
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“These groups are going to have time to react, and they’re going to have a seat at the table,” Nagib said. “Can I see a scenario where they get totally hosed? Yeah, and the way that would happen is if they don’t step up and protect their own interest.”
The courts also took steps recently to try and expand the pool of eligible patients in Illinois.
Courts have ordered the state to add or consider adding seven new qualifying medical conditions to the list of 41 already approved. The office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, a Democrat, is appealing those orders to avoid expanding the number of eligible patients.
If those conditions — including common ones like migraine headaches, osteoarthritis and intractable pain — are ultimately allowed, they would make marijuana available to many more people.
Earlier this summer, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner also signed a law that added post-traumatic stress disorder and terminal illness as qualifying conditions, and extended the medical marijuana program until mid-2020, while allowing doctors to certify that a patient has a qualifying condition without recommending marijuana.
The program extension and growing list of qualifying conditions all point to an industry gaining a foothold in Illinois, according to dispensary operators and industry experts.
“No one’s making silly money, but we’re starting to cover our expenses a little more easily,” Friedman said. “It’s a great industry to be in, but we’re nowhere near where we could be.”
Twitter @RonnieAtPioneer