Georgia Wants USPS to Deliver Medical Cannabis. The Postal Service's Rulebook Has a Catch

When Corey Lowe takes her daughter Victoria to buy medical cannabis in Georgia, the trip starts long before the car does. "It's honestly like having a baby," Lowe told Atlanta News First this week. "You have to get a diaper bag ready and get the person ready and load up their wheelchair and travel to the store." Victoria has constant seizures. Over the years, Lowe said, cannabis has been among the only things that helped. "If someone has cancer or if someone has seizures or they're on hospice care, they can't just hop in the car and drive 30 minutes to a dispensary and get medicine." (S1)

Lowe also directs Peachtree NORML, and she hears the same story from families at both ends of the state. "I hear from patients all over the state, down near the state line and to the top of the state near Tennessee, who don't have access," she said. Georgia has about 45,000 registered patients, 18 licensed dispensaries, and, in Turnage's telling, many areas where the nearest one is a two-hour drive or more. (S1, S2)

On Thursday, August 13, in a special called meeting held by conference call, the Georgia Access to Medical Cannabis Commission voted to post a set of proposed rules that would close that distance with a stamp. Under the proposal, a licensed dispensary could ship medical cannabis directly to a registered patient's home "through either the United States Postal Service or through a private carrier," in the words of the commission's executive director, Andrew Turnage, "and it can only go directly to the registered patient at the patient's address that's on their card." The commission will take public comment at a hearing in Atlanta on September 16 and plans to vote on adoption September 30. (S2, S3, S4)

Turnage called it "one of the more exciting changes" in a long list of amendments, and he was explicit about where the commission thinks its authority comes from: the Justice Department's April order moving state-licensed medical cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. "We think this provides a great pathway," he said. "It maintains the same tracking standards that the commission has, and it really leverages the authority in that DEA rescheduling order for state-regulated medical marijuana program." (S4, S3, S5)

If Georgia adopts the rule, it would be telling its licensed dispensaries they may hand a package of THC to a letter carrier, something no other state regulator is known to have done. Thirty states allow some form of cannabis delivery, but generally by licensed couriers inside state lines, because the Postal Service's rules tie the mailability of a controlled substance to whether its distribution is lawful under the Controlled Substances Act, and marijuana's was not. The order that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed in April, which took effect April 22, changed the schedule. It did not, on its face, change the mail. Whether the two can be reconciled is the question Georgia has now put on the September calendar. (S2, S6, S7)

The rule text is specific about the mechanics. "Where delivery is performed by the U.S. Postal Service, a common carrier, the Commission, or a common carrier engaged by the Commission, the dispensing licensee shall use certified mail, or a carrier service providing equivalent tracking and proof of delivery, with delivery restricted to, and the signature required of, the patient, caregiver, or healthcare institution employee," it reads. "No person other than the registered patient, the patient's caregiver, or the listed healthcare institution employee may sign for or accept such delivery." The tracking number goes into the state's seed-to-sale system "immediately upon completion of delivery." (S3, S4)

Before shipping anything, a licensee would have to file a delivery plan with the commission covering its shipment method, product tracking, recall protocol and diversion controls, including verifying that the patient's card is active and that the shipping address matches the one on the registry. Health care institutions such as nursing homes could obtain a card from the Department of Public Health and accept shipments on a resident's behalf, which Turnage called one of the plan's "greatest added values." "This creates a much more secure transaction for that healthcare facility," he said, "without presenting a risk for diversion, without presenting a risk for, frankly, theft, robbery, an attack in the parking lot." (S4, S2)

The proposal lands in the middle of the fastest growth Georgia's program has ever seen. The Putting Georgia's Patients First Act, Senate Bill 220, sponsored by Republican Sen. Matt Brass and signed by Gov. Brian Kemp in May, took effect July 1. It replaced the state's 5% THC cap with a 12,000-milligram possession limit, legalized vaporization for patients 21 and older, added lupus to the qualifying conditions and dropped the requirement that many diagnoses be end-stage. The patient registry jumped from 34,042 on July 1 to 45,356 on August 5, a 22% increase in five weeks, and crossing 45,000 triggers another round of dispensary licenses for the six producers. Trulieve rang up the state's first legal flower sale at its Marietta dispensary on July 1, to a military veteran, and is supplying more than a dozen independent pharmacies. Gary Long, chief executive of Botanical Sciences, has predicted the expansion could triple the patient count by mid-2027. (S8, S9, S10, S11)

Kemp signed the law with visible reluctance. "I, like many of those who expressed opposition to this bill, have reservations about the legalization of recreational cannabis," he wrote in his signing statement. "I do not believe that a well-implemented medical cannabis program must inevitably lead to the legalization of recreational use in Georgia, nor is the question of recreational use anywhere in the bill on my desk for signature." The delivery rule does not go back to him. Under the 2019 Hope Act, the commission writes its own rules. (S9, S1)

Here is the complication. The Postal Service's own rulebook, Publication 52, says controlled substances are acceptable in domestic mail only when both the mailer and the addressee are registered with the DEA or exempt from registration, or when a prescription medicine is mailed by a pharmacy, practitioner or "other authorized dispenser" under federal dispensing regulations. Georgia physicians certify patients for the registry; under state law they do not prescribe cannabis, and patients are not DEA registrants. Publication 52 also states that if distributing a controlled substance is unlawful under the Controlled Substances Act, mailing it is unlawful under 18 U.S.C. 1716. Separately, a USPS rule in force since October 2021 bars mailing any vaping product, cannabis included, to consumers, with exceptions mainly for business-to-business shipments. Georgia's newest product categories are vaporizers and flower for vaporization. (S7, S12, S13)

Asked about the Georgia plan, the Postal Service told Atlanta News First it would follow all federal and state regulations. USPS, FedEx, UPS and DHL did not respond to Marijuana Moment's questions. Turnage told the station that private carriers already move Schedule III drugs from distribution centers to pharmacies every day, and that he suspects the Postal Service is waiting for the outcome of the DEA's separate, still-pending hearing on rescheduling marijuana more broadly before it changes any policy. Final briefs in that hearing were filed this week. (S1, S4, S14)

Georgia has tested federal patience before. In October 2023, the state let independent pharmacies begin dispensing low-THC oil under a provision of state law. On November 27 of that year, Matthew Strait, deputy assistant administrator of the DEA's Diversion Control Division, wrote to those pharmacies that "neither marijuana nor THC can lawfully be possessed, handled or dispensed by any DEA-registered pharmacy," and that their registrations were at risk. Three years later, with the order rescheduled and pharmacies pursuing DEA registration specifically for medical cannabis, Trulieve says more than 12 of them are stocking its products. The state lost that round on paper and won it on the ground. (S13, S11)

Gary Long, who was on the other side of that 2023 letter, framed pharmacy sales then the way Turnage frames the mail now. "My mother's 80; she's not going to go into a dispensary, but she'll be more than happy to go to a pharmacy to get product if she has a card," he told Cannabis Business Times at the time. Delivery goes one step further: the product comes to the mother. (S13)

“We don't have a dispensary in all areas of the state, but we do have patients in all areas of the state.”

— Andrew Turnage, Executive Director, Georgia Access to Medical Cannabis Commission

Risk advisers are already warning operators not to build a fulfillment business on a First Notice. A briefing published this week by the insurance firm Puro Risk put it plainly: "Federal Schedule III treatment does not automatically override postal rules, carrier policies, DEA requirements, or state compliance obligations," and a Georgia rule "cannot independently eliminate federal postal requirements." Carrier acceptance, it noted, is a contract question, not a regulatory one. (S15)

There is also a narrower objection inside the program: the rule applies only to Georgia dispensaries shipping to Georgia patients. It does not touch interstate commerce, and it does nothing for the patient who lives in a county with no dispensary and a post office that, for now, will not take the package. Turnage's answer is that the state has to write the rule before anyone can test it. "Without these regulations, we don't have guidelines in place for things like delivery," he said. "We think it's really important to put those guardrails in place and establish standards." (S3, S4)

Lowe, for her part, is not waiting for the postal lawyers. "It's Georgia patients first," she said, "and that's what this means, is putting patients first." On September 16, at 4 p.m., at 254 Washington Street in Atlanta, she and anyone else who wants to can tell the commission so in person. The one party whose answer matters most, the one that owns the mailbox, has so far said only that it will follow the rules. Which rules, and whose, is what Georgia has decided to find out. (S1, S3)

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