Advertisement Medical marijuana cultivation facility operating Process to grow medical marijuana takes months Share Shares Copy Link Copy

Medical marijuana dispensaries are getting close to opening in New Hampshire, and one company is already packaging cannabis.Click to watch News 9's coverage.Sanctuary ATC has a 15,000-square-foot growing facility in Rochester. The company said that from start-to-finish, growing the product is a complex process."This is like a dream come true, because I really believe in this medicine, and I really feel that together we can usher in a new era of health," Sanctuary ATC CEO Jason Sidman said.Workers began cultivating cannabis in January. There are about 400 plants inside the vegetation room. The entire process takes months."You want them to get big and bulk up vegetatively before you move them into flower, where you cut the light cycle back from 18 hours down to 12, and that forces the cannabis plant into flowering to produce the bud, which has the medicine, the cannabinoids," said Dr. David Syrek, the company's medical director.After the flowering stage, the cannabis is ready to be prepared for shipping."The commercial kitchen is where we're going to do all the processing, the packaging," Sidman said.Marijuana can be made into oil in the lab, or it's packaged into different forms, such as edibles."It's a child-resistant package," Sidman said, holding up a package. "You can't see what's inside of it. But there's a cookie in there that has 10 mg of THC."Sanctuary has a license to operate a dispensary in Plymouth and has about a dozen people on staff."These guys are professionals," said John Martin of the Bureau of Licensing and Certification. "Their sole interest is making sure they bring the highest quality therapeutic product to their patients."The cultivation site is run on hydro power and uses high-efficiency filtration. Rochester's police chief said it's one of the most secure buildings in the city, and the state has inspected it several times."This is an incredibly secure building, but the security is invisible," Martin said. "You can't see it, but it can definitely see you."Sanctuary said it plans to open its Plymouth dispensary soon, but no date has been set.Get the WMUR app