The Louisiana Legislature moved closer Monday to authorizing pharmacies to dispense medical marijuana to patients in Louisiana. The Senate rubber-stamped the legislation, which spells out how the state’s medical marijuana industry would work, by a vote of 22-13.

If the bill is adopted into law, those with a prescription could obtain the drug in non-smokable form at one of 10 dispensaries across the state. The version of the bill that passed Monday authorizes one growing site. It also restricts the use of medical marijuana to patients suffering from glaucoma, spastic quadriplegia and for those undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer.

While the Legislature legalized marijuana for medical purposes 1978 and then again in 1991, there’s no mechanism in current law that allows for the legal dispensing of the drug. The Department of Health and Hospitals was supposed to write rules for dispensing it nearly a quarter century ago, but the agency never did. Doctors can legally prescribe it, patients can legally use it, but there’s no legal way to dispense the drug. In short, the system lacks a middleman. Senate Bill 143, sponsored by Sen. Fred Mills, R-New Iberia, gives authority to state organizations to set rules regulating a tightly constrained cultivation and dispensary system. [Read more at the New Orleans Times-Picayune]