New Jersey awards state’s final medical marijuana license

Six years and several executive and investor changes later, Harmony Foundation became the sixth and final medical marijuana business in New Jersey to get its cultivation license.

The dispensary plans to be operational by the end of the year, NJ.com reported.

Harmony will operate as a vertically integrated grow and dispensing business out of a 10,000-square-foot greenhouse and retail space in Secaucus, New Jersey, according to the news outlet.

The dispensary – which will be a couple of miles from the New Jersey Meadowlands Sports Complex – expects to be able to serve 4,000 patients in a state that now has 13,200 medical marijuana patients, NJ.com reported.

Gov. Chris Christie’s administration chose six businesses for the state’s MMJ program in 2011 and awarded the state’s first license to Greenleaf Compassion Center in 2012.

Compassion Care Foundation and Garden State Dispensary won their licenses in 2013 and were followed by Breakwater Alternative Treatment Center and Compassionate Science Alternative Treatment Center in 2015.

Harmony, however, languished in discord, as its original founders found themselves caught up in bankruptcy and scandals, NJ.com reported. Those issues delayed Harmony’s licensing process until new owners and investors righted the company’s direction.

CEO Shaya Brodchandel has been working with Harmony since 2015, NJ.com reported. Brodchandel comes from the nuclear medical manufacturing industry and is also a real estate developer.