The Ohio Board of Pharmacy awarded certificates of operation to four more medical marijuana dispensaries Jan. 14, with one dispensary indicating that it might have product on shelves sometime around Jan. 15.
Ohio Valley Natural Relief LLC (Wintersville), The Botanist (Canton), The Botanist (Wickliffe) and The Forest Sandusky LLC (Sandusky) were the latest businesses to receive their certificates, joining CY+ (Wintersville), which received its certificate of operation Dec. 12.
Now, it’s a race to see which licensee will open its doors first.
Representatives from CY+ and the state’s only licensed testing lab, Streetsboro's North Coast Testing Laboratories LLC, have slated Jan. 15 as a tentative date when they may be up and running, according to a Cleveland.com report.
“We’re targeting the week of the 15th for the store in Wintersville,” Jason Erkes, a spokesman for Cresco Labs’ CY+ dispensary in Wintersville, told Cleveland.com. “But everything has to line up.”
Cresco’s 40,000-square-foot cultivation facility in Yellow Springs, as well as Eastlake’s Buckeye Relief, will supply the flower that will be sold upon the opening of CY+, Erkes said.
The Forest Sandusky has also indicated that it will open “within days,” according to the Sandusky Register.
“We are thrilled to announce that we are within days of opening our doors to be able to serve patients here,” CEO Erik Vaughan said during a press conference Jan. 11. “It’s been a long time coming for patients in Ohio to have access to this relief.”
The Board of Pharmacy awarded 56 provisional dispensary licenses in June, which were chosen from 376 applicants statewide and divided into regional districts—Northwest, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast. Provisional licensees had a maximum of six months to demonstrate compliance with the board before undergoing final inspections and ultimately receiving a final certificate of operation.
“A certificate of operation is basically the rubber stamp from the Board of Pharmacy saying that this business has met all of its requirements to be able to open as a dispensary, everything we asked of them,” Grant Miller, a board spokesperson, told Cannabis Dispensary.
The board is in constant communication with provisional licensees, providing clarity and guidance, until businesses receive their certificates of operation. Then, once the board bestows the certificate upon the business, it’s up to them to open their doors, Miller said.
“The certificate is almost like a handing off of the torch from the board to them to say that you may now legally open and operate a dispensary,” he said. “The decision on when exactly they will open [and] what they will be able to do when it comes to product availability is really down to them … because they have to establish relationships with cultivators and processors and that sort of thing.”
The next final inspection of a dispensary is not scheduled for a few weeks, Miller added, but the issuing of certificates is sure to ramp up as the other 51 provisional licensees get up and running.
“At this point, we still expect dispensaries to get certificates, considering we have over 50 left, but the timeframe on that can vary wildly with the number that we have,” he said. “Safe to say, we’re going to continue to press on with helping these licensees to get operational because obviously that’s our goal."
Melissa Schiller
