medical marijuana

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health on Friday awarded 20 licenses to medical marijuana dispensaries – but only two in Western Massachusetts and none in Berkshire or Franklin counties. The two licenses were granted to Debilitating Medical Condition Treatment Centers in Holyoke and New England Treatment Access in Northampton.

(Photo by Ted S. Warren / Associated Press [file])

BOSTON — The Massachusetts Department of Public Health on Friday

to medical marijuana dispensaries – but only two in Western Massachusetts and none in Berkshire or Franklin counties [

].

The two licenses were granted to Debilitating Medical Condition Treatment Centers in Holyoke, run by Dr. Samuel Mazza; and New England Treatment Access in Northampton, run by Kevin Fisher.

Former State Sen. Brian Lees, a Republican who previously served as state senate minority leader and Hampden County clerk of courts, serves on the board of Debilitating Medical Condition Treatment Centers. (The board president is

, president of the New England Farm Workers Council.)

"We're certainly pleased," Lees said. "It's been a long process, but very open, very fair, and now the real work begins of putting the facility together and beginning to serve those folks in Western Massachusetts that will have prescriptions."

Lees said his political position had nothing to do with the application's success. "It's very clear through phase one and phase two that this was a process that had nothing to do with politics in any way. It had to do with putting together the right team and the right application," Lees said. "In my entire time being in public and private life, I've never seen anything done to this level of review, this level of transparency, and the guidelines were very specific."

New England Treatment Access is run by Fisher, who owns Rocky Mountain Remedies, which sells marijuana in Colorado. It is backed by the Kessler family, Boston area philanthropists who have donated to medical causes. Howard Kessler started the financial services company, the Kessler Group. Its patient services director is Leslie Laurie, the former president and CEO of Tapestry Health. It was also licensed to run a facility in Brookline.

The locations of the cities and towns where medical marijuana dispensaries have been approved for 2014.

The state was allowed to issue up to 35 medical marijuana licenses across the state in the first year. Each county must have at least one dispensary, but not more than five. But only two licenses were granted in the four Western Massachusetts counties – one each in Hampden and Hampshire Counties.

The Department of Public Health has invited

who were denied their first choice location to re-apply to one of the counties that did not get a license, which also include Dukes and Nantucket counties. The eight applicants include Patriot Care Corporation, which had hoped to build in Northampton.

Massachusetts Medical Use of Marijuana Program Executive Director Karen van Unen said, “Only dispensaries with the highest quality applications were selected to be a part of this new industry, which will create hundreds of jobs while maintaining community safety.” Van Unen predicted that the dispensaries will serve 120,000 to 130,000 patients over two years.

Van Unen, in a conference call with reporters, said the department will launch a process in the next few weeks in which the eight applicants can re-apply. The department plans to announce final selections for the remaining four counties by early June. Van Unen said these companies will have an advantage because they already got approval from the department. "I would be surprised if they did not jump at the opportunity," she said.

Applicants other than those eight who were not selected in the first round of licensing will not be allowed to reapply in the four remaining counties.

Brian Foote, whose Northampton-based project did not receive a license, said Hampshire County was a competitive county. "A local group like Hampshire Health going up against big players in finance and corporate retail establishments, I thought we scored really well," Foote said. "I'm obviously a little disappointed because we didn’t get chosen. Going forward, I believe we will be awarded maybe in another round of licenses."

Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse said he welcomed the news of the license for the Holyoke facility. Morse said the applicant has "abided by every rule and regulation city has placed on them." "We see this as an investment in downtown, job creation and a needed service for many people who live here in the city of Holyoke," Morse said. Morse said he is not worried about security issues, because the company has a comprehensive security plan in place.

Medical marijuana became legal in Massachusetts after it was approved as a ballot question by 63 percent of voters in November 2012.

The licensing process has been done in stages. There were 159 potential applicants who made it through an initial review in September 2013. Of those, 100 applied in November for the second stage of licensing. In Western Massachusetts, there were five applicants from Berkshire County, three from Franklin County, and four each from Hampden and Hampshire counties.

An evaluation committee then reviewed those applications and looked at the quality of the application, appropriateness of the sites, geographical distribution of dispensaries, local support, and the applicant’s ability to meet the health needs of registered patients while ensuring public safety. The committee included representatives from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the state's Executive Office of Health and Human Services, trade associations of health boards and pharmacists, and the police.

Each facility will be a non-profit company responsible for entire control of the business, including the dispensary and a secure cultivation facility.

Friday's announcement opens the door for the chosen dispensaries to move forward with the next steps: building their facilities, growing marijuana and working with cities and towns to conform to their regulations. Some municipalities, although not Holyoke or Northampton, have passed temporary moratoriums on medical marijuana to give local officials time to develop regulations. The licensees also have to go through a final inspection by the Department of Public Health. Van Unen said most applicants have said they plan to open their doors this summer.

"This is a very important benchmark, and there's a lot of excitement in the patient community that we're getting very close to having dispensaries open their doors so people have safe access to this medicine," said Matthew Allen, executive director of the pro-medical marijuana Massachusetts Patient Advocacy Alliance.

The

facilities that received the licenses will have to pay a $50,000 annual registration fee, plus $500 a year for each agent working at a dispensary. There will be an additional fee of at least $1,500 for an architectural review.

Advocates say medical marijuana will help patients deal with chronic pain, nausea and muscle spasms generated by a variety of debilitating diseases, such as cancer, multiple sclerosis or Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Amanda Bagley of Worcester works for a marketing company and has been an advocate for medical marijuana for four years, after seeing its effects on her husband Brian. Brian, 43, has chronic sciatica and two slipped disks. He is in constant pain and is limited in the medications he can take because of a kidney condition. He left his job at a towing company and is getting disability payments from Social Security. The couple has two children.

Amanda Bagley said marijuana relieves her husband's nerve pain, helps his muscle spasms and does not harm his kidneys. Since possessing small amounts of marijuana is decriminalized in Massachusetts, Brian Bagley has tried to buy it on the black market. But because selling marijuana is still illegal, Amanda Bagley said, "It's hard to find, you never know what you're getting when you do get it and you have to deal with street punks."

"We're really glad now he'll have dispensaries where he can buy things that are tested, that he knows will work, that are guaranteed and tested for adulterants," Bagley said.

But there are still concerns surrounding medical marijuana. Ronald Dunlap, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, warned that the safety of marijuana still has not been proven scientifically, and, because it remains illegal on a federal level, it does not undergo the same Food and Drug Administration testing as other drugs. State rules do not include regulations regarding dosage or how to take the drug.

Dunlap said he worries that "certification centers," where patients will see doctors specifically to get a marijuana recommendation, will circumvent an ongoing doctor-patient relationship. The state established those centers to help patients whose primary care doctors will not recommend marijuana.

"We are…treading into new territory in Massachusetts with medical marijuana, and it will be critical to oversee and monitor the work of dispensaries to ensure they act consistently within the law and regulations," Dunlap said.

Elsewhere in the state, four licenses were issued in Middlesex County, which is the state's most populous county, and two licenses each were issued in Barnstable, Bristol, Essex, Norfolk, Plymouth, Suffolk and Worcester counties. A company run by Democratic former U.S. Rep. Bill Delahunt, Medical Marijuana of Massachusetts, received licenses to run dispensaries in Mashpee, Taunton and Plymouth.

Asked how politics were kept out of the selection process, selection committee member John Carmichael, the Walpole deputy police chief, said on a conference call with reporters that there was a merit-based scoring system in place, in which applicants were evaluated based on operations, public health, security, strength of the business, geographic dispersion and local support of the applicant. An independent firm reviewed the applications and scored them, and an outside investigative firm conducted background checks of managers, board members and investors. "We didn’t focus on anything that had to do with the face of the applicant, what their status might have been," Carmichael said.

This is a breaking news story that will be updated.

List of approved provisional medical marijuana licenses:

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Applicant Name Town County Medical Marijuana of Massachusetts, Inc Mashpee Barnstable William Noyes Webster Foundation, Inc Dennis Barnstable Medical Marijuana of Massachusetts, Inc. Taunton Bristol Brighton Health Advocates Inc. Fairhaven Bristol Alternative Therapies Group, Inc. Salem Essex Healthy Pharms, Inc Haverhill Essex Debilitating Medical Condition Treatment Centers, Inc Holyoke Hampden New England Treatment Access, Inc Northampton Hampshire Patriot Care Corp. Lowell Middlesex Central Ave Compassionate Care, Inc Ayer Middlesex Garden Remedies, Inc Newton Middlesex The Greeneway Wellness Foundation, Inc. Cambridge Middlesex New England Treatment Access, Inc. Brookline Norfolk Ermont Quincy Norfolk Medical Marijuana of Massachusetts, Inc. Plymouth Plymouth In Good Health, Inc. Brockton Plymouth Good Chemistry of Massachusetts, Inc Boston Suffolk Green Heart Holistic Health & Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Boston Suffolk Bay State Relief, Inc Milford Worcester Good Chemistry of Massachusetts, Inc. Worcester Worcester

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