After sharp increases in patient numbers and a stated need for more dispensaries to provide care, three new medical marijuana dispensaries have been approved by the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection to open for business in New Haven County by early this summer.
Two of the new dispensaries, Arrow Alternative Care #2, Inc. and Southern CT Wellness & Healing, LLC will be located in Milford, while the third, Caring Nature, LLC, will be in Waterbury.
“With the addition of three new dispensary facilities, the state”™s Medical Marijuana Program will be better able to meet the medical needs of the 1,941 patients in Fairfield County, and the 2,141 patients in New Haven County,” said Jonathan Harris, commissioner of the consumer protection department overseeing the state”™s medical marijuana program.
When a request for proposals for the three additional facilities was issued in June 2015, Harris stated there was a distinct need for more dispensaries in Fairfield and New Haven Counties, particularly because of the vastly greater amounts of medical marijuana patients in those counties compared with the rest of the state.
However, none of the new dispensaries are located in Fairfield County, which continues to be served by a single dispensary in Bethel, nearly an hour drive from the most populous cities along the county”™s coast.
“Our process was very thorough and very competitive,” said Lora Rae Anderson, director of communications for the department of consumer protection. “We picked the locations we did because after our evaluation process they looked like the best places for patients to get their medical marijuana. We certainly think the patients in Fairfield County have more options than they did before.”
Of the 19 applicants who responded to the request for proposals, Anderson said about half had specifically chosen Milford for their dispensary ”” a possible reflection the municipality”™s welcoming planning and zoning laws, she said.
Anderson said she could not specifically comment on the laws of any towns, but she did acknowledge that the lack of dispensaries in Fairfield County could be a reflection on the part of dispensary applicants of perceived headwinds against establishing dispensaries in the county.
“The general stigma medical marijuana has is something we are trying to overcome,” she said. “In our minds this is medicine we want to get to patients.”
According to Angela D”™Amico, owner of Compassionate Care Center of Connecticut in Bethel (also known as D&B Wellness), her dispensary ran through a gauntlet of Fairfield County municipalities before being welcomed by Bethel.
“We fought really hard to get here,” she told the Business Journal earlier this month. “We went through almost every municipality in Fairfield County.”
While some of the applicants had selected lower Fairfield county locations such as Stamford and Norwalk, their applications did not score higher than the three New Haven County-based locations recently chosen, Anderson said.
Of the six currently operating dispensaries, only one dispensary is located in Fairfield, New Haven and New London counties, respectively, while three are located in Hartford County.
With the addition of the three new dispensaries there will be a total of nine throughout the state, bumping New Haven County”™s dispensary count to four.
In June 2014, the state medical marijuana program had 1,398 registered patients. A year later, the number of patients rose to 4,100 and as of December 30, there were 7,912 patients. With over 8,200 patients currently registered in the program and growing at an estimated rate of 100 per week, Anderson said her department may be prompted to consider issuing a request for more dispensaries in the future, with a particular focus on Fairfield County.
