TIMES LEDGER: REGO PARK WOMAN IS FIRST PATIENT AT BOROUGH’S FIRST MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARY
As a medical professional for more than 20 years, 52-year-old Emily Taylor of Rego Park was very much against drug use and never tried marijuana in her life. Than she began suffering from multiple neuropathies with chronic stabbing pains all over her body beginning six years ago.
“I had to try and control the pain with huge doses of opiates and other narcotics that left me useless,” said Taylor, which is not her real name because she asked that her identity be protected. “Then came the recurrent migraines that made me suicidal.”
When Vireo Health of New York opened the borough’s first medical marijuana dispensary last Friday, Taylor was the first patient through the door. After a consultation she left the facility, located at 89-55 Queens Blvd., just steps away from the Queens Center mall in Elmhurst, with a week’s supply of cannabis-based medication products in the forms of vapor and capsules instead of tinctures and oils that are also available.