The City of Lansing continues to review applications for medical marijuana business licenses, and so far, few have been approved. Katie Cook reports.
The City of Lansing has received a total of 149 applications for medical marijuana licenses. That includes all five types of businesses that can obtain licenses: provisioning centers, processors, secure transporters, growers, and safety compliance facilities.
Of that number, only two have been approved so far: one safety compliance facility and one secure transporter. Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope says one more secure transporter is close to being approved, as well as about 15 grower facilities. As far as processing facilities are concerned, 14 applied and are still being reviewed.
Of course, the largest chunk of applicants is the provisioning centers, or dispensaries. Lansing has a large number of these and their existence has caused some controversy. 85 dispensaries applied for a license and about 20 have been denied so far.
City Clerk Swope explains some of the reasons for denying the licenses.
“It’s primarily been on building safety issues. For example, making changes to their building without getting the required city approvals. And they had to submit plans on how they’re going to address certain factors of storage and disposal of things, and we had to kick some back and ask them to make revisions. And then even the revisions didn’t meet the standards.”
The ordinance allows for only 25 dispensaries to exist in Lansing, and it states that only 20 can be approved during this first round of licensing.
Marijuana businesses are going through the application process at the state level as well, but have to get approved in Lansing before the state will approve them.
This whole process will likely be done one month from now, as that’s the deadline issued by LARA- Licensing and Regulatory Affairs.
LARA recently released an advisory bulletin stating that their emergency administrative rules require applicants to cease operation if they have not been issued a license by June 15, 2018.
