WARWICK — Two medical marijuana growers who were in the process of seeking one of the state's new marijuana cultivation licenses were arrested last week after state officials conducted an unannounced inspection.

Stefanie Fischer and Thomas Moulton, the owners of Coastal Aeroponics LLC, a registered medical marijuana growing operation in Warwick, were arrested Feb. 22. Fischer, 26, and Moulton, 29, were charged with possession with intent to deliver marijuana and possession of more than a kilogram of marijuana, state police spokeswoman Laura Meade Kirk said.

The state Department of Business Regulation has also revoked the company's application for a cultivator license. (Coastal Aeroponics' initial application was approved in January. The company's full license was pending a final inspection.)

"My clients have worked diligently to comply with the DBR's medical marijuana cultivator licensing regulatory process. ... They certainly would never jeopardize the final stage of their licensing process by distributing marijuana without proper licensing," said James Ryan, an attorney representing the couple. "We are appealing the DBR order and are confident that they will be exonerated of these allegations."

Fischer and Moulton were featured as an example of the state's growing medical marijuana workforce in The Providence Journal's Pot and Profit in Rhode Island series in October 2016.

They are among the dozens of private growers who as registered "caregivers" had been legally growing and selling marijuana to the state's dispensaries through a loophole in state law. Seeking to crack down on the black market, Governor Gina Raimondo's administration cut off caregivers from selling to the dispensaries in January and instead are required such growers to go through a lengthy licensing process.

Norman Birenbaum, the state's top medical marijuana regulator, said Coastal Aeroponics passed an initial scheduled inspection earlier in the year. But when DBR inspectors arrived unannounced last week, they determined the business was in violation of "multiple program rules and regulations and state law."

The violations, which Birenbaum would not elaborate on, were forwarded to state police. He said the inspection is proof that the state's licensing process is working. This is the first case the department has seen where an issue was found after an application was approved but before a license was issued, he said.

"When we issue a license to one of these facilities we have real-time, live-feed access to their video security system. We can log in to every square foot where marijuana is," Birenbaum said. "Once these facilities are licensed, this would never happen."

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