Fox 13 Utah report
SALT LAKE CITY — On the first day that it opened, Dragonfly Wellness served 16 qualified medical cannabis patients. On the second day, it served one.
Dragonfly has turned away hundreds who sought to get in the door because they have not been qualified by Utah’s Department of Health as medical cannabis cardholders. They are cancer patients, people with glaucoma and other ailments that qualify them to get medical cannabis, said Hoang Nguyen, a manging partner at the medical cannabis pharmacy.
“We have plenty of product. We are not going to run out of product,” Nguyen said in an interview Wednesday with FOX 13. “It’s just, we don’t have patients right now. It’s so heartbreaking to have to turn away these patients who come to our door and have the letter thinking they can come in and they can’t. We just can’t.”
Dragonfly is also having to fight rumors spreading on Facebook that it is already closing. It is not. The cannabis dispensary’s owners are frustrated with those rumors and the state moving slowly to approve qualifying medical cannabis patients.
“Why is it taking so long to get patients through?” Nguyen said Wednesday.
Utah’s Department of Health provided FOX 13 with the latest numbers: 1,200 applications have been submitted through a state-run site. Of those, only 66 have been approved for medical cannabis cards. Approximately 850 are awaiting physicians to approve a step, while 320 are awaiting patients to complete a process.
