Medical marijuana ‘POS’ software crashes, preventing sales to sick patients in Pennsylvania

Medical marijuana patients across the state couldn’t buy medicines yesterday due to an update in a tracking software system that’s supposed to track sales, not prevent them.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health requires all marijuana transactions to be processed through a software system called MJ Freeway. The seed-to-sale tracking software has been prone to chronic glitches since the state signed an exclusive $11 million contract with the Colorado-based company.

Dispensaries from Philadelphia to Erie reported that they could not conduct sales for hours of Tuesday. Many sent out text alerts and emails to their clients, posted warnings to Facebook and Twitter, and apologized on Instagram to their patrons for shutting down early.

Growers also could not ship marijuana products to dispensaries because they could not fill out manifests on their computers. Shipments that did make it to dispensaries yesterday could not be sold because they could not be logged in the MJ Freeway system by the retailers.

MJ Freeway spokeswoman Jeannette Horton said the software, officially called Leaf Data Systems, was down sporadically for a total of hour-and-a-half.

“It may have felt longer because it was intermittent,” Horton said. “We’re very apologetic for the issues they experienced. Today we’re hearing it’s all been resolved.” [Read More @ The Philadelphia Inquirer]