While the first legal sale of medical marijuana didn’t happen in 2018 as Ohio’s law allowed, officials say the slow-to-develop program is ready to deliver.

“There will be product available really, really soon,” Mark Hamlin, a senior policy advisor at the Ohio Department of Commerce, said recently. “We know the initial product will be very small. It will be limited as well, and it will be plant material only as we wait for processors to come online.”

The Wintersville dispensary, CY+, received its certificate of operation last month. Another 55 dispensaries have provisional licenses, according to the Ohio Department of Commerce. A dozen are set to eventually open in southwest Ohio including two in Cincinnati, two in Dayton, two in Springfield and one each in Beavercreek, Columbia, Lebanon, Monroe, Riverside and the Village of Seven Mile.

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) — A northwest Arkansas company plans to work with the University of Arkansas to grow, research and process hemp flowers for the budding cannabis oil industry.

Fayetteville-based Arkansas Hemp Genetics LLC says it has secured a partnership with the university’s horticulture department to research industrial hemp for the first time since its prohibition after World War II.

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Gov.-Elect J.B. Pritzker campaigned on a platform to end cannabis prohibition in Illinois, often emphasizing the ways legalization could benefit minority communities that have been ravaged by the drug war and largely left out of the state’s budding cannabis industry.

But some black leaders have been slow to endorse the Pritzker-backed legalization effort that’s being spearheaded by state Sen. Heather Steans and state Rep. Kelly Cassidy. The Chicago Democrats plan to introduce a new bill to legalize marijuana when lawmakers reconvene in Springfield next month.

“Clarity is really important,” said state Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, joint chair of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus. “We do not want to find ourselves in the position where we’re just generating revenue—which is terribly needed. We’re creating a new statute that I believe I could support provided that it has parameters in place that are clear and understood among state’s attorneys, judges, law enforcement and the community.”

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