Georgia’s indy pharmacies will be allowed to sell cannabis oil

The Board of Pharmacy has approved a plan to allow independent pharmacies in the state to get licenses to sell cannabis oil.

No, not to anyone. These are regs “that will allow Georgia’s independent pharmacies to dispense cannabis oil to eligible patients enrolled in a registry maintained by the state Department of Public Health.”

It’s not a total surprise — the 2019 law had a provision allowing this, but it’s only now that the BoP has taken action.

But when?

Andrew Turnage, executive director of the state’s Access to Medical Cannabis Commission said “the board plans to roll out a draft application form next week that will include the proposed fee schedule. He expects the first pharmacies licensed to sell cannabis oil to begin selling the medicine in late August to early September.”

GPhA member Ira Katz, owner of Little Five Points Pharmacy, told Atlanta News first…

“Medical cannabis needs to be in the hands of independent pharmacies. So that way we can do a good job consulting with our patients. Whether it be a tincture, gummies, or soft gels, whatever the patients need.”

Fun: The story even made it to High Times magazine.

The latest anti-PBM bill

It’s been more than a week since we’ve seen an anti-PBM bill, so it’s about time. And lookee here — it’s the seventh such bill introduced in Congress. This one has the best name, though: the Patients Before Middlemen Act. (Take that, PBMs!) And like most of these, it’s bi-partisan. (Kumbaya!)

In short, it would stop PBMs from being paid based on a drug’s list price, which gave them an incentive to put the more expensive drugs in their formularies.

Eventually someone’s gonna have to roll all these bills into one lovely package, but at the moment it’s kind of a free-for-all.

CCBs? Watch your eyes

Got patients taking calcium-channel blockers? They might want to keep an eye on their eyes. It seems that “patients with a history of CCB treatment had a 23% higher likelihood of developing glaucoma as compared with individuals who never used the antihypertensives.” (That’s according to British researchers.)

On the other hand, patients taking beta blockers had a reduced risk of glaucoma thanks to “modestly reduced intraocular pressure.”

How much did your town score?

The data from the Big Opioid Settlement(s) are out, and now you can see how much your state, city, town, or village is going to be getting over the next three or so years.

For Georgia there are four numbers — two for the settlement from the drug distributors (Allergan, CVS, J&J, Teva, Walgreens, and Walmart) and two for the settlement with Janssen.

The state has promised to disclose how it’s spending its portion of the funds, but municipalities have not. Regardless, they’re required to report any spending on programs not related to the opioid crisis.

How much did your local government get? Look for the links to municipality details below.

From the distributors

$68.5 million total over three years:

• $51.4 million to state coffers
• $13 million to municipalities
• $4 million “backstop”

Municipality details are in two PDFs: distributors years 1 & 2 and distributors year 3

(Numbers are rounded, so they won’t add up perfectly. Also, “Math is hard.” —Barbie)

From Janssen

$104.7 million total over two years

• $78.6 million to state coffers
• $22.1 million to municipalities
• $4.1 million “backstop”)

Municipality details are in two PDFs: Janssen year 1 and Janssen year 2

(Numbers are rounded, so they won’t add up perfectly. Also, I might be bad at math.)

A step to understanding long Covid

We know long Covid exists (even if the list of symptoms is a bit, er, flexible), but the exact cause hasn’t been clear. Scientists at Seattle’s Allen Institute think they’ve found a big clue, though.

Remember the way to bet: It’s either inflammation or gut bacteria. In this case, it’s inflammation.

The Allen folks found that people suffering from long Covid have a particular set of skills protein molecules that persisted in their blood, but weren’t in patients who had completely recovered.

The potential good news: These protein biomarkers “point to a flavor of inflammation similar to that seen in autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.” How is that good? Because it’s possible that JAK inhibitors, used for rheumatoid arthritis, might treat it, and no one has bothered to test them on long Covid.

As you might imagine, that’s next on the agenda, as well as narrowing down those biomarkers to create an objective long-Covid test.