And now, the waiting game begins.

Friday at 4:30 p.m., the window closed for applications to secure one of eight licenses to be issued for operating the state’s first medical marijuana dispensaries.

They will be regulated under rules developed and adopted by the state Department of Health, but the agency faces an even more contentious decision: choosing which of the applicants will make the cut.

Those on the outside of the process are watching with interest — and a measure of concern. While he takes exception to some aspects of the rules, Carl Bergquist, executive director of the Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii, is glad to see the state at this juncture.

“So far, so good, and the Department of Health is managing this process commendably,” Bergquist said in an email reply to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “It gives us great hope that some retail stores and production centers will be up and running across different islands in the near future.

“And that perhaps as early as mid-July of this year … some will be actually dispensing medicine to patients,” he added. “With a patient base of some 13,000, with predicted massive growth, this cannot come too soon.”

Department officials have said they expect license recipients to be announced by April 15. The Star-Advertiser is taking this pause in the process as an opportunity to review the landscape of this controversial issue — where things seem to be settling down, and where they are still in flux.

The selection process

Hawaii Administrative Rules (section 11-850-21) lays out the criteria on which applicants will be scored, including the business plan, experience, financial backing, a clear criminal record, capacity to produce the drug securely and to help and educate patients.

But DOH is keeping a tight control on information, including who will be on the selection panel. In general, said spokeswoman Janice Okubo, officials have preferred to take questions but then put any new information on the frequently asked questions section on the website (health.hawaii.gov/medicalmarijuana/).

The less one-on-one interaction with the public, Okubo said, the less vulnerable the department will be to accusations of unfair distribution of the facts.

“There’s already that speculation out there that we already have people in mind,” she said. “We’re just trying to avoid that perception.”

As a result, the request to interview Keith Ridley, chief of the DOH Office of Health Care Assurance, was declined.

When the application process opened in October, it drew early interest from some known names in the community. Just a few of them: Anthony Takitani, a Maui attorney and former state legislator, registered Maui Medical Marijuana Dispensary LLC with Hollywood film agent and producer Shep Gordon; Peter Carlisle, former Honolulu mayor and longtime city prosecutor, is representing and is an investor in a group seeking a license; and former state Attorney General David Louie, is also representing a potential licensee.

The emerging who’s-who list among the applicants has made some observers a little nervous that the process will be fair to all. Mark Merlin, a University of Hawaii botany professor and co-author of the book “Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany,” counted himself in that group.

“I’m concerned that it’s not just given to friends, that there’s no corruption, that it’s based on merit rather than connections,” Merlin said. “I hope that it is.”

Current state law

Hawaii legalized medical marijuana in 2000 but now lags behind the pack of states that have established systems for its distribution. Lawmakers for years held the issue at arms length, finally enacting the law enabling the regulations of dispensaries in the 2015 session.

And predictably, given its contentious nature, legislators have mixed feelings about the status of the program now.

The most outspoken among them in the early weeks of the 2016 session is state Rep. Marcus Oshiro, who last week introduced House Bill 1680, which essentially would end the grow-your-own practice of medical marijuana users who, up until this point, had no other source for the drug.

It’s uncertain where the bill may go; it’s already drawing fire from others in the state Legislature, including state Sen. Josh Green, the longtime Senate Health Committee chairman who now serves as majority leader.

Its introduction represented a departure from Oshiro’s statement in recent weeks that he wanted to see the 2015 law and the administrative rules work for one legislative cycle before amending it.

In general, he praised DOH for “putting the rules together in such a short time,” and for taking a conservative approach by disallowing sales of dessert- like products containing cannabis or of pre-rolled joints for the delivery of the drug.

State Sen. Rosalyn Baker, however, said she was disappointed that the rules diverged from the intent of the law in some respects. For example, the rules would preclude growing the marijuana in a greenhouse, due to concerns about securing the facility.

“We clearly defined, I thought, how the plant was to be grown,” said Baker, who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Consumer Protection, and Health. “The way we described it, it could be considered a greenhouse.”

She also expressed concern that the restriction on the forms of the drug could do a disservice to those who don’t smoke. Restricting the sale of manufactured joints at dispensaries fits with the state’s general policy discouraging smoking, Baker acknowledged, but there’s a disconnect there, too.

“If we want people to avoid smoking, and I would be in that category, then we have to do what we can to allow the alternatives,” she said.

Bergquist took issue with even the ban on joint sales.

“Patient access to medicine is affected,” he said. “The customers are, after all, patients, who should be able to get the medicine in the form they need.”

He also cited the 2015 law phasing out by 2018 the ability of a caregiver to grow medical marijuana on behalf of a patient.

“How are some patients — with, for example, arthritis — supposed to ingest their medicine?” he asked rhetorically. “Roll their own cigarette?”

Federal law impact

A low-profile provision Congress passed in 2014 effectively ends the federal prohibition on medical marijuana, but that doesn’t quite negate the impact of federal law on the medical marijuana scene.

Cannabis remains a Schedule 1 drug, according to the Controlled Substances Act, and that has presented some complications.

One was largely dealt with last year: Rule 49 in the Hawaii Supreme Court’s disciplinary code initially precluded attorneys from helping to establish medical marijuana dispensaries, said Carlisle, who was among those concerned about the hurdle.

But a later decision by the court’s Disciplinary Board carved out enough legal space for the lawyers to provide counsel, he said.

Carlisle said he is convinced of the medical utility of marijuana for symptomatic treatment of myriad ailments, but he remains opposed to legislation permitting recreational use of the drug.

Some critics have pointed to the illegality of marijuana as a barrier to research on how to use the drug most effectively. However, Carlisle is encouraged by the progress state officials have made.

“The critical thing they did was put it into motion,” he said, “recognizing that there are medicinal uses for marijuana in a number of shapes, fashions or forms.”

The business side

Today is the second and final day of the 2016 Hawaii Cannabis Expo at the Neal Blaisdell Center Exhibition Hall. The event includes paid classes (“Intro to Growing, Bud Tending and Strain Selection”) presented by the Cannabis Career Institute.

Robert Calkin, the institute’s founder, said he expects to address three different audiences at the expo: the patients, prospective dispensary owners and those professionals who hope to gain clients — lawyers, accountants, insurance agents and marketing experts, among them.

The institute will be back in March to teach follow-up classes, Calkin said. It makes the rounds of the 23 medical-marijuana states, as well as those with no such law.

“Every state anticipates it eventually,” he added. “It’s just a matter of how to prepare for it.”