Medical marijuana dispensary will expand to Kaneohe

It appears Kaneohe will be the location of Oahu’s first medical marijuana retail dispensary outside of urban Honolulu.

Noa Botanicals announced Tuesday that it is aiming to open its second location near Windward Mall in the first quarter of 2019.

“This is a big milestone for the industry,” said Brian Goldstein, founder and CEO of Noa Botanicals, one of the three Oahu medical marijuana licensees.

The company’s second dispensary will be a 1,700-square-foot retail store located within Windward at 46-028 Kawa St. in Kaneohe.

The new store will offer the same menu of cannabis strains and manufactured products that are sold at Noa Botanical’s 1308 Young St. store in Honolulu, Goldstein said. They include flowers, concentrates, tinctures, oils, cartridges and topicals.

Goldstein said his company also is looking to open a third store, possibly in West Oahu.

Each dispensary can operate two production facilities — that each may grow up to 5,000 plants — and two retail centers, possibly a third with the approval of the state Department of Health. The third store is supposed to be located in an underserved area.

There were 22,078 medical marijuana patients registered with the state as of Aug. 31. Patients are required to obtain a medical cannabis patient card, also called a 329 card, through the Health Department.

The state legalized medical cannabis in 2000, but patients had no legal way to obtain the drug. That changed on Aug. 8, 2017, when Maui Grown Therapies opened its doors, and Aloha Green Apothecary in Honolulu started business the following day.

The other pot retailers include Pono Life Maui and and Cure Oahu in Honolulu. In May, Green Aloha Ltd., doing business as Have a Heart, started sales on Kauai. On Hawaii island, Hawaiian Ethos LLC started its production center in August and is aiming to open a store later this year, as is another Big Island dispensary, Lau Ola.

Goldstein said the industry has grown more slowly than expected, but the Young Street store is now seeing 50 to 90 new patients a week.

Investing in a second store shows confidence in the future of the market and the community, he said.

The company received a lot of requests to open a dispensary on the windward side of the island, Goldstein said, and a geographic analysis of its customers found that a quarter of them likely would find the new location more convenient.

The new store will be about half the size of Noa Botanicals’ Honolulu dispensary, but it will look very much like the current location, he said.

This weekend marks the first anniversary of the opening of the Young Street store, and the company will celebrate with giveaways and special product offers. Food trucks will be on-site daily from Friday through Sunday. Additionally, the first 40 people each day will receive a free Noa Botanicals anniversary T-shirt.