If everything goes as planned, medicinal products containing marijuana could be in the hands of Ohio patients starting Jan. 15. But a lot has to go right in a short amount of time.
One of the first licensed dispensaries ready to open its doors is CY+, owned by Cresco Labs in Wintersville, Ohio. The hold up for them is that testing labs are not yet ready to go.
"We don’t have a date yet, as we are waiting for the testing labs to be ready to accept our product [and the other cultivators' product] for testing," said Jason Erkes, a spokesperson for Cresco Labs. He added that Cresco Labs is hopeful that they can begin selling product the week of January 14th, but there are no guarantees.
The first private lab to receive a license to operate is North Coast Testing Laboratories, LLC in Streetsboro. They received licensing back on Dec. 20, but are still working to validate their equipment to make sure testing is accurate.
"Once [labs] are operational, the turnaround should be pretty quick," Erkes told us.
Meanwhile, demand for marijuana products continue to grow each day. According to the latest figures from the State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy, 4,964 patient recommendations have been submitted through the registry in four weeks. Of those recommendations, 3,575 people have activated their registry card.
Ohio’s Medical Marijuana program has been delayed nearly four months since its original target date of Sept. 8.