Peninsula Alternative Health revolutionizing treatment in Salisbury

If all goes as planned, Peninsula Alternative Health will be opening its doors as a medicinal marijuana dispensary in Salisbury before years end, bringing with them medicinal treatments that can treat a variety of serious conditions. 

They're pre-approved by the state's commission and according to CEO Anthony Darby, a main reason why they've gotten this far is their patient first model.

"At our beginning of our model and the end of our model everything goes through the patient and then next to the patient we took the community consideration," Darby said.

As someone who is currently raising a family with two daughters in the Salisbury community, Darby said making sure the community was aware of what they are bringing to the area is very important.

Darby said their projected store front will be non-descript and will be more like a doctor's office than some of the candy shop dispensaries people may have seen on television.

Despite that attention to detail, Darby and clinical director Mary Pat Hoffman know that before they open their doors, easing people's fears and misconceptions of what a dispensary is will be key.

"A big part of this is just removing the stigma that's been associated with this so for long," Hoffman said. "Cannabis has been used as medicine for thousands of years, it has an amazing safety and efficacy profile."

Hoffman herself became a believer in what cannabis can do in the medical field roughly a decade ago.

While working at a pharmacy in Delaware an elderly woman who had been a frequent patient became ill with cancer. Hoffman said the woman became so ill she couldn't eat or sleep. One day the elderly woman's son approached Hoffman with the idea of using cannabis to help ease his mother's pain.

"Her son arranged obtaining it and the consumption of it and she came in about three months later with tears in her eyes and open arms and just told me that it changed her life. She was able to sleep, she was able to eat, she was able to tolerate her chemotherapy regimen and more importantly it kind of lifted her mood," Hoffman said.

Now Hoffman and Darby hope to help people in the same way in the Salisbury area and ease people's concerns that they won't be frowned upon for exploring cannabis as a medical option.

"I want peninsula alternative health to be a place where people can come and feel comfortable talking about it, I don't want them to feel like they're being judged, I don't want them to feel like they're doing anything wrong. this is medicine and it's going to be treated respectfully as any other prescription medicine would be treated by health care professionals," Hoffman said.

Hoffman has already started working with the next generation of health care professionals at University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Hoffman said she's co-written a syllabus and is co-teaching a class to second year pharmacy students.

"When these students graduate, cannabis will be a legal acceptable form of medicine in the state of Maryland and I think it's really important that they understand how it works, why it works, side effects, just like the would a normal prescription medication," Hoffman said.

Going forward Darby and Hoffman said the will also work with physicians in the area to inform them of medical uses of cannabis.Once that's done, they will hold a symposium in the area.