Marijuana businesses told to pick up licenses

The state Department of Health issued licenses Thursday to the eight businesses chosen to begin selling medical cannabis legally for the first time in Hawaii.

DOH spokeswoman Janice Okubo said the companies selected to open the state’s first medical marijuana dispensaries were given the green light to pick up their licenses and officially begin work to open retail outlets as early as July 15.

Aloha Green Holdings Inc., Manoa Botanicals and TCG Retro Market 1 LLC were selected to open dispensaries on Oahu. Hawaiian Ethos and Lau Ola were chosen for Hawaii island, and Maui Wellness Group and Pono Life Sciences Maui were selected for Maui. One company, Green Aloha, was selected to open retail outlets on Kauai.

While the law allows dispensaries to open July 15, it will likely take the owners longer than that to hire staff, grow the product, find retail space, get all the necessary permits and open shop.

“We were thinking about the end of the year. We were going to push for earlier, but we’re trying to be realistic about it,” said Big Island farmer Richard Ha of Lau Ola.

Ha is among the list of prominent local businessmen — including former Maui Land & Pineapple CEO David Cole, insurance executive Colbert Matsumoto and Richard Lim, former director of the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism — who won medical marijuana dispensary licenses last month.

Ha said he is still working to obtain building permits and register with the state Narcotics Enforcement Division to be able to dispense the drug and doesn’t know how long that process will take.

“All of the different things, that takes a little bit of time,” Ha said, adding that the licensees will be seeking answers to a lot of questions with the Health Department. “We feel anxious, but there’s not much we can say until we actually get to ask all the questions.”

Retired Honolulu attorney Shelby Floyd, who is now living on the Big Island and leading Hawaiian Ethos LLC, said the group pushed back its opening date after initially hoping to launch a dispensary in Kona at the end of the summer.

“The company is still working on a number of components, and I expect them to be firmed up in a week or so but right now they’re still in progress,” she said. “Everything has been pushed back by at least a month just because of the delays in the department getting started. We still don’t have a registration with the Narcotics Enforcement Division because they don’t have their process finalized yet. So even if we were, in every other way, ready to go, that is still a barrier or a step that we haven’t completed. Certainly our goal is to have it up well before the end of the year.”

Act 241, passed in 2015, allows medical marijuana businesses to operate two production centers and two retail dispensaries, for a total of 16 dispensaries statewide. Hawaii became the first state to legalize medical marijuana through the legislative process 16 years ago, but patients did not have a legal way to obtain the drug.

LICENSE APPLICANT SCORES

The state Health Department released Thursday the applicant scores of the eight businesses selected to sell medical marijuana for the first time in Hawaii as early as July 15. Licensees were selected based on the scoring of 13 criteria that included capacity to meet the needs of patients, proof of financial stability and the ability to ensure product safety.