Two weeks from today is the deadline for applications for Maine's eight medical marijuana dispensary permits. The permits will be awarded on a point-system by a four-person panel from the Department of Health and Human Services. Some potential operators are hoping to get more than one permit. Many have out-of-state connections. At least one is hoping to replicate its California experience in Maine. And that has some activists worried that Maine patients and growers will be cut out of the process.

Call it a gold rush or a green rush or a purely altruistic interest in seeing authorized patients get access to medical cannabis. Whatever it is, Portland attorney Ken Altshuler says Maine is looking pretty good to the would-be operators of the state's first marijuana dispensaries.

Altshuler figures it was his appointment to the state's medical marijuana task force that put him on their radar. "I gotta tell you, I probably have gotten a hundred emails and phone calls all over the place about wanting information on how to start a dispensary," he says. "Probably ten people were from Maine but I've gotten emails from New Mexico, California, lots of places."

Not only are out-of-state residents writing and calling to try to get a piece of the action, but at least one well-established dispensary from California is trying to set up shop.

"When I found out they were voting on it, and I've been running a dispensary out in California for some time now. I felt a sense of entitlement, I guess, to come back here and help these guys not make the same mistakes that California made," says Tim Schick.

Schick, who says he grew up in Maine, is a director at the Berkeley Patients Group, which recently helped sponsor a medical marijuana conference in Portland. Schick says BPG provides medical cannabis to about 13,000 members in the Berkeley area, as many as 1,000 patients in a single day.

No one yet knows how many Maine patients will enroll in Maine dispensaries. But Schick is hoping BPG's ten years worth of experience will give his associates an edge in the state scoring process.

"We've sent our top level management person, Becky DeKeuster -- she's actually out here and she's now a Maine state resident, so she will be running the dispensary and hopefully in a similar capacity to what we do in Berkeley. We can only hope we get one of the permits," Schick says.

Maine's new law requires principal officers and board members to be Maine residents, so Schick says BPG won't have a direct hand in the day-to-day operations. Becky DeKeuster says she took up residency in Maine this spring after traveling back and forth from California to advise the state's medical marijuana task force on how it should implement the new dispensary law.

"We kept coming back. We were able to provide, I hope, good advice," DeKeuster says. "And in the meantime, I pretty much fell in love with the state, honestly. And it became apparant that if we really wanted to help Maine's law develop, that I needed to be out here, so I went ahead and moved out."

DeKeuster says she intends to call her non-profit the Northeast Patients Group. The group has already reached out to one member of the state's medical marijuana task force. Patient advocate Faith Benedetti says she's in discussions to join the group's board.

DeKeuster declined to say where she wants to locate a dispensary. But in May the Kennebec Journal reported that she showed up at an Augusta City Council meeting and told the city manager that she hopes to open one in the area. In addition, DeKeuster's business card lists her address as 45 Memorial Circle in Augusta, the same address as Dan Walker's.

Walker is an attorney with Preti-Flaherty who helped write the medical marijuana referendum. He also served on the state's medical marijuana task force. And he says he's now been hired to help guide the Berkeley Patients' Group through the dispensary application process.

"Berkeley Patients Group is one of the leaders in this field -- like the cream that's floated to the top," Walker says. "They've set up safety councils. They gave, last year, gave hundreds of thousands of dollars back to the community. They have a model. And they want to share that with the states that are doing it. They want to make sure it's done right."

And, Walker says, not only does the group want one permit, but like others in the application pipeline, BPG is seeking multiple permits for dispensaries around Maine. Each dispensary application carries a $15,000 price tag, and that doesn't include the capital outlay necessary to provide a secure facility to accommodate both a growing operation and a therapeutic space for patients.

"Berkely Patients Group, to me, is an outside entity. They're not here for the patients. They think they can make money in our state," says Charlie Wynott of Westbrook, who is an AIDS patient, a caregiver and a long-time activist who has been part of the Maine Medical Marijuana Resource Center since 1994.

Wynott says his group is an AIDS service organization whose primary goal has been to provide low-cost or no-cost medical marijuana to authorized Maine patients since Maine first passed a medical marijuana law a decade ago. "Now, our frustration is that we cannot afford, as a non-profit, to pay the state $15,000 for one of these eight dispensaries. The funds that it would take to run one of the eight dispensaries means that you have to be huge."

Because the eight dispensaries are required to be run as non-profits and can't pay dividends to shareholders, attorney Dan Walker says it's misguided to think that operators will make alot of money from them. But observers note that several applicants are expected to seek multiple permits to run dispensaries, and could take a big piece of the pie.

"It seems like it's a state-run monopoly when we limit the number of potential dispensaries to eight, and potentially allow just one company to own them all," says John Stewart of Washington, a disabled veteran and caregiver who recently testified at a public hearing on proposed rules governing the use of medical marijuana. "Nobody likes a monopoly. It wouldn't be allowed in any other industry and it certainly shouldn't be allowed in this industry."

Under the new rules, dispensaries can pay their boards of directors, consultants and staff, but they cannot pay local growers or caregivers to provide them with medical cannabis. That has to be grown on site. The rules also require authorized patients to choose between getting their drug at a dispensary or through a registered caregiver.

Caregivers are allowed to provide medical cannabis for up to five patients, but it will cost them -- $300 dollars for each. And Charlie Wynott says he can't afford that. "I, as an individual, am on social security. I make $640 a month. Do you think I can give the state $300 of that in order for me to help a patient with medication? That's one patient, mind you."

Wynott worries that the whole intent of the medical marijuana law -- to get Maine patients affordable access to their preferred drug -- will be upended by a few powerful outside interests. State Sen. Stan Gerzofsky, chair of the Legislature's Criminal Justice Committee and a member of the state medical marijuana task force, says he's also wary -- and watching.

"Whenever anyone is going to dominate a market and they come from elsewhere and they want to come here for a specific reason where that product is illegal in most every other state, that would be a very serious concern of mine. I haven't found many things that an out-of-stater can do better than a Mainer. I'm sure we can grow good marijuana."

Some predict Maine patients may be more comfortable dealing with personal caregivers and bypass the dispensaries altogether. Others say the required patient and caregiver registry are too much of an invasion of privacy and they'll just continue to operate under the table.

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