West Virginia regulators recently announced that ten medical cannabis processors would be issued with business licenses, among them multistate operators such as Columbia Care of New York, Holistic Industries of Massachusetts, Trulieve of Florida, and Verano Holdings of Illinois.
According to Charleston TV station WOWK, West Virginia regulators said they would award licenses to the following operators: Armory Pharmaceuticals (in Buckhannon), Columbia Care WV ( Falling Waters), Harvest Care Medical ( Bridgeport), Holistic WV Farm I (Beaver), Mountaineer Integrated Care (Fort Ashby), Tariff Labs (Left Hand), Trulieve WV (Huntington), Verano WV (Beaver), V3 WV GP (Maxwelton).
The medical CBD processors will be awarded the licenses enabling them to process medical marijuana into products permitted by the law and sell them to certified medical marijuana dispensaries.
Before this new development, the state had previously awarded cultivation licenses, three of which went to multistate operators and several other out-of-state and West Virginia investors.
West Virginia medical marijuana licensing program rollout has been relatively slow. However, the regulators have made tremendous progress in recent months. The next step for the regulators would be to rollout dispensary applications, which is the final step in issuing permits for the industry.
Once the issue of permits has been fulfilled, the regulators are expected to begin handing out medical marijuana patient cards as soon as 2021.
Meanwhile, the Cannabis Regulators Association (CANNRA), a government regulatory group drawn from across several US states, has established a nonpartisan organization to share the best industry practices and knowledge.
The association’s inaugural chairman, Norman Birenbaum, said in a statement that CANNRA will provide a much-needed forum for regulators to engage with each other.
The new forum will help identify and develop best practices, create mode policies that safeguard public health and safety, and promote regulatory certainty for participants.
