- Bell Rexall Pharmacy in Camden combined a traditional drug store with a cannabis dispensary, Camden Apothecary, under the same roof.
- This hybrid concept represents a full circle moment for the pharmacy, as it had previously offered cannabis for medical purposes before the federal government began prohibiting the plant in 1937.
- The owner believes this model can not only help address the growing “pharmacy deserts” in urban areas but also destigmatize cannabis use, particularly among older patients.
A South Jersey pharmacy is pioneering a business model that combines a drug store with a cannabis dispensary, under the same roof. Located on Haddon Avenue in Camden, Bell Rexall Pharmacy has been a mainstay in the neighborhood since 1931, serving generations of families. Besides being a first for both the cannabis and pharmacy world, the hybrid concept is a full circle moment for the property.
When it originally opened as Bell Drug Co., the pharmacy offered cannabis to those who needed it for medical purposes until the federal government started prohibiting use of the plant in 1937.
Now, with cannabis once again legal to buy in New Jersey, Anthony Minniti, a third-generation pharmacist whose family took over Bell Rexall in 1997, believes the pharmacy is the perfect place to help bring marijuana into the medical mainstream.
After opening in November 2023 as a sister business to the pharmacy, Camden Apothecary is a dispensary that serves both recreational customers and medical patients. The shop, which received a license from the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission to sell adult-use cannabis was launched by Minniti and Marian Morton, his sister and Bell co-owner.
While the pharmacy and dispensary operate as separate entities, Minniti says they share a commitment to personalized community-focused service and care.
Accessible through the lobby of Bell Pharmacy, Camden Apothecary sells flower, cartridges, extract, edibles, preroll, pills, tinctures and topicals.
At the newly renovated, two-story space, the first floor is geared toward customers who want to come in, quickly shop or pick up online orders. The second level is aimed at more of a cannabis connoisseur and offers them a place where they can take their time looking at different products before purchasing.
For individuals concurrently using other medications, Camden Apothecary offers drug interaction assessments conducted by trained pharmacy staff members. These evaluations can identify interactions between cannabis and a patient’s current medications, thus ensuring optimal cannabis recommendations that reduce the chance of experiencing adverse effects, according to the dispensary.
Along with discounts to Camden residents, state-issued medical card holders, senior citizens and veterans, Camden Apothecary offers savings to patients of Bell Pharmacy who have a medical card qualifying condition. Workman’s compensation and motor vehicle accident patients can also receive 10% off cannabis purchases.
In the U.S., 48 of the 50 states allow for some form of medical weed and 25 states have legalized recreational cannabis for adults.
Since the April 2022 launch of legalized adult-use sales in New Jersey, more than 160 retail stores have opened. Given the growth of the industry over the past two years, the CRC is confident the market will surpass the $1 billion mark in 2024. According to the CRC, dispensaries can be found in all 21 counties across the state. Camden County has the most (18), followed by Burlington County (16) and Union County (15).
“A lot of dispensaries will have pharmacists as employees or available for a consult, and other pharmacists may own dispensaries that they’re not at. We’re the only location where the pharmacist owns the pharmacy and the dispensary and it’s all one. And that’s what’s so exciting about this model,” Minniti said. “Everything for us is about relationship. And that’s one of the things where I think most dispensaries are getting in wrong today. It’s not retail – it’s 100% hospitality.”
Cannabis roots
Besides being the oldest continuously operating independent pharmacy in New Jersey, Bell Pharmacy is also the only one in the country to sell cannabis both before and after its prohibition.
Minniti – a self-described pharmacy memorabilia enthusiast – recalled a bottle of cannabis tincture with a Bell Pharmacy label printed on it that he found 27 years ago after taking over the business.
“The previous two ownerships never threw away anything … So it was really cool because we found a lot of little interesting artifacts and antiques, like a bottle with a label on it that said tincture of cannabis and regular prescription label just like every other drug,” he said.
Shortly after the 2012 rollout of New Jersey’s medical marijuana program, Minniti said he remembered his find and thought, “’Wow, wouldn’t it really be something to bring that back to this pharmacy?’”
Customers, particularly older people, also began asking Minniti about medical cannabis as a natural alternative to powerful pain medications to aid with aches, pains and chronic conditions, he said.
Although his efforts to obtain a medical license failed, Minniti’s application to sell legalized adult-use cannabis was approved in August 2023. “We were successful in my initial vision – which was to bring the worlds of pharmacy and cannabis side by side into one location. Granted, it wasn’t the original intent, which was to have medical cannabis across the counter, but having an adult-use gives us a lot more freedom and latitude in developing integrated programs between pharmacy and dispensary that allows us to do some very interesting patient-focused initiatives,” Minniti said.
In addition to being a state-licensed pharmacist, Minniti spent 15 years in local politics, including four years as Cinnaminson mayor.
The Republican said, “Bell exists in goodwill of the community and would never do something to the community that would change the feeling toward Bell Pharmacy. And that helped ease some of the concerns of the elected officials who had to make the decision about whether or not to allow cannabis in the city.
“I understood the concerns from an elected official standpoint, which gave me the ability to have conversations with the council and the mayor and the council president in Camden, and really be able to speak one-on-one to them and say, listen, ‘I was a mayor. I know what you’re worried about. I know what your concerns are regarding the public.’ And my point was, ‘I’m sensitive to that and if you trust me to do this, we’re going to do it the right way in Camden, we’re going to be a model, and it’s going to be something that you can be proud of.’”
Camden initially banned adult-use marijuana businesses to give city officials more time to craft rules for the rollout. In February 2022, the council adopted an ordinance allowing all types of cannabis ventures but setting a cap on the number of licenses. Under city code, a maximum of 20 retail dispensaries are allowed.
Within Camden, there’s only one other dispensary currently – Organic Farms. The Mount Ephraim Avenue shop opened last fall as the city’s first retail outlet for cannabis.
A pharmacist void
In the wake of many big pharmacy chains like Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens shuttering hundreds of locations nationwide, Minniti thinks his pharmacy-based cannabis dispensary practice model presents an opportunity.
Minniti said, “We’re experiencing what they call pharmacy deserts in urban centers. This was one way that I saw that could bolster or give independent community pharmacies the ability to stay open and to continue serving their communities because it isn’t tethered to insurance reimbursements, all of the PBMs [pharmacy benefits managers] and all the problems that beset pharmacy today and are closing closures of even the biggest chains.
“If cannabis was available to pharmacists like me, would more pharmacies open in the inner city and be able to stay open in the inner city? Because really those are the communities that need pharmacies the most,” he explained.
“There was always the concern that ‘well, you’re flooding an inner city plagued with drugs already with more drugs.’ That’s not true. What’s available right now is black market product that nobody really knows what it is, how it was grown or where it came from … My argument was it [the model] actually would erode the black market a little bit and it would provide safer alternatives. That’s something that we’ve seen bare itself out during the year that we’ve been open.”
After recalling a time in which cities often had several family-owned and operated drug stores that catered specifically to their respective immigrant populations, Minniti said believes independent community pharmacies “play a vital role.”
“My grandfather was sort of my inspiration and started me in the business when I was 14 years old. I’m 54 now, so it shows you how long I’ve been doing this. And I got to learn a lot from him about what pharmacy was like before everything was just count and fill bottles and churn prescriptions out. And the pharmacy was really sort of the central health care point or hub of each neighborhood,” he said.
Since Minniti started developing his pharmacy-based cannabis dispensary practice model several years ago, he said it’s evolved based on regulatory and market changes.
“With the latest version, I’ve been able to bring it to the point where it’s ready for other pharmacies to implement if they wanted to do so. I don’t guard it like a secret – the idea was to show colleague pharmacies a different way,” he explained.
“Ideally, we would like our cannabis guests to be pharmacy patients and vice versa. There’s a lot of great synergy between both sides and so many of our cannabis guests became pharmacy patients. It helps bolster and solidify our pharmacy business and allows us to continue to provide the other services for our community that we do. And there’s always an opportunity for those on the pharmacy side to avail themselves for cannabis,” Minniti said.
Under the approach, the pharmacist analyzes a patient’s existing medications and then recommends alternative treatments that can improve symptoms while decreasing reliance on traditional pharmaceuticals.
In a traditional pharmacy practice, pharmacists counsel patients and recommend products to replace – or augment – current prescription therapy. These products can include herbals, supplements, nutraceuticals and over-the-counter options that are readily available onsite.
But if a pharmacist recommends cannabis, they’d lack direct access to it, which represents a significant hurdle to properly guiding a patient to the therapy.
In Minniti’s model, a pharmacist has direct access to cannabis products and can provide them directly to the patient, which, Minniti said, enhances the likelihood that a patient will initiate and continue the recommended regime.
The pharmacist can also offer to convert a patient’s flower into differently compounded forms, like cured rosin.
As part of the model, Camden Apothecary uses an endocannabinoid DNA test made by California biotech research firm Endocanna Health.
Minniti explained, “It’s a brand-new technology. And what it does through a simple cheek swab is map the genome for all the endocannabinoid and terpenes and based on your different genetic variants or markers. The software that comes along with the purchase of the kit guides us in how we can prescribe the most appropriate cannabis products for each individual based on their individual genetics. Just like a 23andMe test or any other test that you take and send off, it tells each person the concentration of THC and CBD that would work well for them and what to stay away from.”
“Now, from a pharmacist standpoint, I can sit down with a patient, look at this report and make science-based recommendations … We’re using this test to tailor cannabis to the patient as if we were prescribing medication on the pharma side utilizing pharmacogenomics,” he said. “There’s only one company that holds the patent on the technology and we are the only dispensary that they’re currently working with.”
Blending two very different industries hasn’t been easy. The combination of both a dispensary and pharmacy hasn’t exactly been embraced in either sector, but Minniti said he believes it won’t always be that way.
“We get contacted all the time from private equity firms and venture capitalists who want to know what to do it so they can scale it … What we do is very specific and very tailored for our community and our immediate region, but it is something that can be taken and tailored to all different regions … I’m always happy to share how we do it. The idea was always not to hold it all to myself and to show a new way and hope others would follow it, make it work in their area and become successful with it, too,” he said.
“I’m always willing to listen to offers or meet to discuss our business, but I’m really not interested in taking on new partners or ceding even minority interest in our company at this time. We’re always developing and implementing new concepts or approaches to our practice that are unique and deviate from the norm. This requires a level of risk tolerance and patience that may not be acceptable for outside partners. With regard to this concept specifically? There is significant interest in re-packaging this practice model and offering it as a turnkey solution to other pharmacies,” he said, adding, “This would be more of a licensing play than a franchise model.”
“If there were a financial or licensing play, it would likely be in the form of an advisory service. Further, since all states handle cannabis, as well as pharmacy, differently, there is no one-size-fits-all model. Each state would be unique. And that also applies to the market for this hybrid model as well. Again, what works in the New Jersey market might not be a good fit for the Midwest or West Coast, for instance. If this venture were to move forward, there’d need to be a large investment in market studies and assuming they come back positive, there’d need to be another large investment made to contract pharmacy and cannabis professionals that know each state,” he explained.
More than a ‘fun drug’
Minniti believes his model can play an important role in establishing cannabis as a true alternative to traditional prescription therapy.
“Cannabis represents a tremendous opportunity for pharmacists to practice at ‘the top of their license’ to reduce over-reliance on prescription medication. The patients who may benefit most include veterans, first responders, retired athletes, individuals on worker’s compensation due to injury, and even those seeking alternatives to traditional substance misuse disorder treatment,” he said.
He also thinks it can help address misconceptions about the plant – particularly from those over the age of 50 who are hesitant to enter a dispensary because they worry about someone seeing them “buying weed.”
“But they would go to Bell Pharmacy. So, it sort of destigmatizes where they’re going and what they’re purchasing because they’re entering through a pharmacy and they’re speaking to a pharmacist,” Minniti said.
“We’ve been able to convert a lot of our older patients who may have been on opiates, etc., to cannabis. And what’s good about having both side by side is previously I could recommend cannabis to somebody, but they walk out the door and who knows? Now if I say, ‘You know what, we can probably get you off of this more addictive medication and it works also with Ambien for sleep or benzodiazepines like Xanax and Valium, so, why don’t we try this?’
“It’s most rewarding when it’s our older patients who’ve been suffering with arthritic conditions … and are on constant treatment for pain medication … can, first, get relief, and then secondarily weaned off medications that they’ll tell you don’t make them feel very well when they take it,” he said.
“Then, they’ll come in and show me how they can squat up and down to show how their knees are and how they’re able to walk in now and weren’t able to before,” he said. “They’ll also say how life-changing cannabis has been and how they wish they had access to it before. The more and more stories that we get along those lines, I think we’ll see a greater acceptance of the idea of bringing pharma and cannabis together in the same practice setting,” Minniti stated.
He went on to say, “As cannabis continues to become more in the mainstream of medicine and you see prescription coverage and you see insurance coverage for cannabis, we’re going to be uniquely to be able to lead that transition.
“Our goal is, of course, to build that bridge between mainstream medicine and cannabis, but also keep cannabis as a legitimate therapeutic front and center and not allow it to fade away out of the medical and just be dominated by, ‘Oh, it’s a fun drug.’ Cannabis is so much more than that and we need more practices like ours that are focused on that medical side of it, too.”
H/T: njbiz.com
