By Amanda Lee Myers
More than 700 patients applied for Arizona’s medical marijuana program since the state health department began accepting applications last week, and about 80 percent of them were approved, according to statistics released Friday by the Arizona Department of Health Services.
Between the first day that the Arizona Department of Health Services began accepting applications on April 14 and Wednesday, 718 people applied to get medical marijuana cards. Of those, 579 were approved, the department said.
Those who weren’t approved will have to reapply.
The department also released demographic information about the applicants. About 78 percent of them were men, and the largest age group, at 37 percent, was people 51 and older. The next largest age group, at 22 percent, was people between 41 and 50 years old.
Diseases reported included cancer, Hepatitis C, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and Crohn’s disease, and applications came in from across the state, with clusters in the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas.
The application process is entirely online. Patients have to do about a half-hour of data entry with things like their age, address and medical condition. They then have to attach documents to their applications that include a photograph of themselves, a photo ID, and a signed doctor’s “attestation” that the patient needs medical marijuana and will not give or sell it to anyone else.
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