

NEA Full Spectrum, which received the seventh highest dispensary score in Northeast Arkansas’s Zone 3, is building a new facility near 11913 Highway 49 in Brookland (Craighead County). Gerald Sale, president of the company, said it hopes to open for business by May 1.

Northwest Arkansas Medical Cannabis Group and Grassroots OpCo received the top two scores in Zone 3, respectively, but NWA Medical Cannabis Group chose to locate in Northwest Arkansas’s Zone 1 and Grassroots OpCo chose to locate in Central Arkansas’s Zone 5. Natural State Wellness received the fifth highest score in Zone 3, but also chose to locate in Zone 5, which bumped NEA Full Spectrum into the top four scoring dispensaries for Zone 3.

Sale owns an 11.25 stake in the business. Other owners include Anthony P. Horner, 11.25 percent; June Williams of Williams & Son Nursery, 22.5 percent; Teresa Gail Sale, 11.25 percent; Vicki Laree Benjamin, 11.25 percent; Jim Todd Watson, 11.25 percent; Elizabeth Ann Watson, 11.25 percent; and owner of High Altitude Hemp Company Joshua Ryan Egle, 10 percent.

NEA Full Spectrum’s dispensary application originally listed 480 Highway 49 in Rector as its proposed location. At the Feb. 13 Medical Marijuana Commission meeting, Sale said the dispensary requested a change in location in order to “better serve our core patients.”


“There’s such a gap in [dispensary locations] that our patients would be on the road a lot more,” he said. “It would just be a safety issue and a convenience for them.”

The new location is in between Paragould and Jonesboro. “Most of the people from North Arkansas go to Jonesboro or Paragould to see their doctor anyway,” Sale added. The Commission approved the change in location request.


Since the dispensary is constructing a new building, Sale could only give an approximate street address for the site. Construction hasn’t started yet, but contractors have visited the property to bid, Sale said. NEA Full Spectrum has also begun taking bids on security companies for the dispensary’s “intense” security plans.

“You will be on camera from the time you drive in, to the time you leave, inside and out,” Sale said.

NEA Full Spectrum will be “very big on customer service,” Sale said, so depending on patient demand — and Commission rules — for product transport, the dispensary will make some deliveries, but they will not be a large part of the business.

Sale said the dispensary’s name derives from its intent to provide a wide range of products, including edibles, oils, topicals and CBD options, as well as hemp products. NEA Full Spectrum also plans to grow its own cannabis strains with the help of its in-house grower, and dispensary co-owner, Egle.


According to Sale, the dispensary is also working with a cannabis “breeder” in Denver who has created a strain that the breeder thinks will be “the best thing yet to help people get off opioids.”