The state Department of Health and its commissioner, Dr. Howard Zucker, announced on Friday the names of the five businesses that will be permitted to grow and dispense medical marijuana in New York.
The plans of those business in the Hudson Valley region include a manufacturing facility in Orange County as well as two dispensaries in Westchester County and one in Ulster County.
“Today’s announcement represents a major milestone in the implementation of New York State’s Medical Marijuana Program and keeps us on track to have the program up and running within 18 months of passage of the Compassionate Care Act,” Zucker said in a statement. “The five organizations selected for registration today showed, through a rigorous and comprehensive evaluation process, they are best suited to produce and provide quality medical marijuana to eligible New Yorkers in need, and to comply with New York’s strict program requirements.”
The five organizations that were awarded licenses are Bloomfield Industries Inc., Columbia Care NY LLC, Empire State Health Solutions, Etain LLC and PharmaCann LLC.
Each company is permitted one manufacturing facility and four dispensaries, where patients can purchase marijuana, according to the July 2014 Compassionate Care Act, which opened the doors for medical marijuana in the state.
Only Bloomfield Industries will grow marijuana outside of Hudson Valley in a yet-to-be-specified location in Queens County.
The remaining manufacturing sites will operate in the counties of Monroe, Fulton, Warren and Orange.
Etain, based in Katonah, and Empire State Health Solutions will have dispensaries in the Westchester County area, while the remaining businesses will have dispensaries close to Westchester in New York and Bronx counties as well as dispensaries throughout upstate and on Long Island. Etain also will have an Ulster County dispensary.
The DOH said 43 companies had submitted applications for consideration.
In an effort to show how the selection process was conducted, the department released the scoring criteria on its website and stated that “all 43 applications received by DOH, which include tens of thousands of pages of information, will be made publicly available after appropriate redactions of trade secrets, personal information, and critical infrastructure information.”
