14 Apply To Sell Medical Marijuana In Worcester County
Of the 181 nonprofit applications for medical marijuana dispensaries sent to the state for consideration, 14 are in Worcester County, the state announced today.
The list of applicants for up to 35 dispensaries in the state was released this afternoon by the Office of Health and Human Services and includes the names of applicants, a contact person for each one and the preferred county for siting a facility.
Middlesex County had the highest number of applicants at 47.
"We're glad that it was a highly competitive process," Department of Public Health Commissioner Cheryl Bartlett said Thursday.
The law requires at least one but not more than five dispensaries in each of the state's 14 counties. The counties range in size from Worcester and Middlesex, which comprise much of the central and northeastern areas of the state, to the island counties of Nantucket and Dukes.
"In phase one, they were not required to do any municipal outreach," said Bartlett, who said the first phase of vetting applicants' backgrounds and finances would be completed in September. She said municipalities said they don't want to engage in dealings with developers until they have received phase-one approval, and said that for cities and towns that established moratoriums on dispensaries it would be "hard to site a dispensary at this particular time."
Applicants who pass phase one of the process will go on to phase two, when a selection committee will conduct an in-depth review and select dispensaries through a competitive process, the state said. Phase two applications will be evaluated based on factors such as appropriateness of the site, geographical distribution of dispensaries, local support, and the applicant’s ability to meet the overall health needs of registered patients, while ensuring public safety.
Massachusetts voters allowed the legalization of medical marijuana on the November 2012 ballot, and DPH has developed regulations including the process for the "seed to sale" businesses that will distribute the leafy drug to qualified patients.
See the full list of applicants here.
Material from State House News Service was used for this report.
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