Only one can get a license
It’s a pretty good bet that Henderson County will be the home of a medical cannabis dispensary sometime next year.
Of a recorded 433 applications from dispensary businesses wanting to locate in the Green River Region, 173 of those are for a location in Henderson County, according to information supplied by the Kentucky Office of Medical Cannabis.
Henderson’s total dispensary business applications are second to those that applied to locate in Daviess County, which had 247 dispensary applications. Between the two counties, that’s 420 applications.
A drawing, conducted by the Kentucky Lottery, will be held this year to determine which dispensary businesses, along with their proposed locations, get to start the process of setting up shop in the Green River Region, which along with Henderson and Daviess, includes McLean, Union, Webster, Ohio and Hancock counties.
Still, there’s an outside chance that a dispensary won’t be chosen to locate locally.
Businesses submitted applications to locate in three other counties in the Green River Region—11 in Ohio County, one in Hancock County and one in McLean County.
Medical cannabis guidelines set up by the General Assembly say that four total dispensaries can locate in one region, and there can be no more than one in a county.
Looking at the high odds, it would seem that Henderson and Daviess are a lock to get one each, but there’s always the chance—however slight it might be—that Ohio, Hancock and McLean counties beat those odds and a dispensary is drawn to land there, which would leave either Henderson or Daviess out. It’s not the best bet, but stranger things have happened.
Both Webster and Union counties—and jurisdictions within—have opted in to allow dispensaries to locate there, according to an interactive map on the Kentucky Office of Medical Cannabis website. (See that map here.) But no dispensary business applications for either were submitted during the application process in the summer, according to the state medical cannabis office.
The state medical cannabis office also said that there was one business application for a cultivator, or growing facility, in Henderson County, so next year, there’s the possibility that a dispensary and cultivator facility will be in Henderson County. State regulations require that medical cannabis cultivators must all be enclosed and locked facilities, such as greenhouses or grow houses, and not open field grow farms.
Another type of facility that is a part of the medical cannabis process in the state are processors. There were no business applications to locate a processor business in Henderson County.
State regulations require that patients must show an identification card that certifies their use of medical cannabis. And medical cannabis cannot be smoked. It must be converted into edibles, or gummies, for consumption, which is the job of a processor.
The Kentucky Office of Medical Cannabis will host the first drawing—conducted by the Kentucky Lottery—for processor or cultivator businesses on Oct. 28.
The lottery for dispensaries will occur after, most likely in November. The state medical cannabis office has not released the date yet.