Ohio regulators received 370 applications to sell medical marijuana but will initially award only 57 licenses at most.
Cuyahoga and Franklin counties could have up to five dispensaries apiece, while many suburban and rural counties might not have any. And because no applications were filed in six western counties, the state won’t redistribute those counties’ three licenses to other parts of the state.
Seven applications were received for the Northwest-6 district, which included Marion County. They included four applications for Marion itself and three outside the county.
Applications (with the name of the applicant) for the nearby areas included:
- Mother Earth’s Meds LLC – Cheryl Kepford – Northwest-6 Marion
- Ohio Therapeutics, LLC – Benjamin Burkhardt – Northwest-6 Marion
- Rooted Wellness Of Marion, Inc. – Christopher Sumi – Northwest-6 Marion
- Verdant Creations, LLC – John Hondros – Northwest-6 Marion
- Eagle Dispensaries 5, LLC – James Kaufman – Northwest-6 Wyandot
- Eagle Dispensaries 5, LLC – James Kaufman – Northwest-6 Wyandot
- Ohio Cannabis Clinic LLC – Brian Wingfield – Northwest-6 Hardin
- Green Health Dispensaries LLC – Sandra Fekete – Southeast-4 Delaware
- Agri-Med Enterprises, Inc. – Charles Griffith – Southwest-8 Union
- Bcco, LLC – Robert Landis – Southwest-8 Union
No applications were received for Crawford and Morrow Counties.
The most applications were collected for the northeast corner of the state, where 150 applied for up to 18 licenses. In the southeast region, which includes Franklin County, 105 applications were submitted for 17 available licenses.
Click here to see a list of the names of the applicants.
Of the 145 applicants, 80 applied for two or more licenses. Dispensary owners can only hold five licenses at most.
No one applied for a dispensary in Shelby, Logan, Miami, Paulding, Van Wert and Mercer counties. Those counties were grouped in two dispensary districts, with the southwest district allocated two licenses and the northwest given one.
Board spokesman Cameron McNamee said the board will decide at a later date, likely after sales begin next year, whether to accept additional applications for those areas and whether to add more dispensaries to meet patient demand.
The board decided to initially award up to 60 licenses based on estimates that between .04 and .44 percent of Ohio’s population — or between 4,600 and 51,000 patients — will sign up for the program in the first two years. Industry projections estimate between 1 and 2 percent of the population will qualify.
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