Nine months after voters legalized recreational marijuana, 98 medical dispensaries have been given the green light to start the state’s first non-medical sales Tuesday to Ohio customers who are 21 and older.
With the first certificates of operation out, the Division of Cannabis Control—the agency overseeing the statewide adult-use sales program—beat its Sept. 7 deadline to license retailers by about one month.
“A big reason we were able to get to this point ahead of the Sept. 7 deadline was due to the foundation laid through the state’s existing Medical Marijuana Control Program,” Division Superintendent Jim Canepa said in a news release. “Since existing licensees had already met stringent requirements of that program, we anticipated this process to be rather smooth.”
The emails started going out Friday, notifying dispensaries that they had gotten dual-use certificates—the final puzzle piece most of them were waiting on. Before Friday, only cultivators, processors and labs had the operational certificates.
Of the 98 licensed retail locations so far, agency data showed that about one-third are in Ohio’s biggest cities. Nearly 200 dispensaries submitted dual-use applications as of late July, meaning some applications still are processing.
Outside of the urban cores, dispensaries span the state in suburban and rural communities. That excludes more than 60 cities, towns, and villages in which there are active marijuana moratoriums, according to data from the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.
The Division said in its release Monday that some dispensaries with operational certificates may not be prepared to start sales to non-medical customers this week. And for those that do, owners of dispensaries have said they have also been preparing for the potential of long lines and stock shortages early on.
“We’re hoping for a lot of people, but also hoping that a lot of people are patient with us,” Terrasana spokesperson Nikki Stanley said in an interview last week.
