Here’s Where Jersey’s Next Medical Marijuana Dispensary Will Open This Year
The dispensary will have the capacity to serve 4,000 patients in the state.
Six years after the Christie administration selected a half-dozen nonprofits to produce cannabis for the state’s medical marijuana program, the last one of the bunch on Thursday received a permit to begin growing its first crop, Health Commissioner Cathleen Bennett announced Thursday. Foundation Harmony will operate from a 10,000-square-foot indoor greenhouse and retail establishment in a commercial and industrial section of Secaucus by the end of 2017, according to Bennett and a dispensary spokeswoman. “After two years of designing and constructing this state-of-the-art facility, we are excited to finally put it into action, and to serve New Jersey’s patients with the purest and most effective medical marijuana,” Shaya Brodchandel the president and CEO, said in a statement. “We have selected strains which we believe are well suited for New Jersey medical patient’s conditions and to our unique growing system.” Gov. Chris Christie announced the future permit holders in 2011 in a process plagued by a cumbersome review process under a governor who still suspects that medical marijuana is a back-door attempt at full legalization. Every dispensary applicant has undergone a long review and complicated state and local approval process, but Harmony Foundation struggled more than the rest pulling its operation together, as partners and investors came and went. Brodchandel, 30, is new to the cannabis industry, but brings his knowledge of working in the highly-regulated industry of nuclear medical manufacturing, dispensary spokeswoman Leslie Hoffman said. He is also a real estate developer, and has been attached to the dispensary since 2015, she added. New Jersey’s 13,200 registered patients are served by five nonprofit dispensaries, also known as alternative treatment centers, in Montclair, Woodbridge, Cranberry, Bellmawr and Egg Harbor.
Link – NJ.com
