While the agency in charge Washington D.C.’s medicinal cannabis program has changed, Maryland’s medicinal cannabis program continues to reckon with a lack of racial equity, and Virginia’s program is just getting started, nearby West Virginia has approved its first 10 medicinal cannabis cultivators: Armory Pharmaceutical of Maryland; Blue Ridge Botanicals of Texas; Buckhannon Grow of Ohio; Columbia Care of New York; Harvest Care Medical of Maryland; Holistic Industries in Massachusetts; Mountaineer Holding of West Virginia; Mountaineer Integrated Care of Pennsylvania; Tariff Labs of West Virginia; and Verano Holdings of Illinois. There were in total 39 applicants for these growing licenses and 10 were chosen. West Virginia still has to award licenses to 10 processors and 100 dispensaries.
This has been a longtime coming—West Virginians voted in favor of medicinal cannabis in 2017—but these initial announcements suggest the program could be operational by spring 2021, according to Marijuana Business Daily. West Virginia however, does not include either flower or edibles, which will severely limit the scope of the program and make it unlike most other medicinal markets in the United States. As The Outlaw Report noted last month, a number of Democratic candidates for The House Of Delegates are backing the Normalization Of Cannabis Act, which they promise, if they are elected, to introduce.
