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More marijuana plants are finally growing in the Garden State, as one of the six new medicinal dispensaries obtained its permit to grow the plant this week.

The state Department of Health announced that Green Thumb Industries (GTI) in Paterson has passed several site inspections and background checks, as well as reviews of its security operations and cultivation facility.

“We’re very pleased to be the first ones,” said Devra Karlebach, the CEO of GTI New Jersey. “We are very honored and humbled that we were awarded a license initially."

She said the facility is still awaiting its retail permit and for employees in that sector to pass background checks. But on the cultivation side, GTI put plants in the ground Wednesday.

“Everything takes a long time in New Jersey,” she said.

Karlebach declined to estimate when Green Thumb might open, but thanked the Department of Health, City of Paterson and the Gov. Phil Murphy for their roles in expanding the program and shepherding the company through the process.

The state’s medical marijuana program has exploded under Murphy, and now has more than 60,000 patients. But they still rely on the six initial suppliers, leading to long waits and shortages.

Opening a major facility involves an extensive permitting process. The state required the current six operators and six more pending dispensaries, including GTI, be vertically integrated. That means they must grow, process and dispense the marijuana.

Six new providers, including GTI, were awarded licenses in the second round last December. The Health Department has pushed them to open, but delays in the process left the state without any new providers.

Another provider awarded a license, Justice Grown, has broken ground on its 5,000 square-foot facility in Ewing. That facility estimates its opening in December 2020.

The program is set to expand even more. Nearly 200 potential operators filed to open a medical marijuana business in New Jersey during the most recent round of application requests in July and August.

The Health Department said it would license as many as 24 applicants: up to eight marijuana businesses in the northern region of the state, eight in the central region of the state and seven in the southern region of the state. They are not all mandated to grow, process and dispense the marijuana.

A spokesman for the Health Department did not immediately respond to a question on the status of other pending dispensaries.

Amanda Hoover can be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandahoovernj. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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