After a medical marijuana company abandoned its cultivation license on Monday in an area west of Chicago, the permit is being offered to the runner-up in the district’s scoring process: PharmaCann.
PharmaCann already has one cultivation permit and four dispensary licenses, and it’s now poised to become the biggest MMJ company in the state, with more licenses than any other business.
The original cultivation permit winner, Green Thumb Industries, decided it didn’t want to pay the $200,000 fee for the license along with the required $2 million escrow account. The company had “expressed concerns about the cost of the license while only about 1,000 patients have been approved to get medical marijuana,” according to The Chicago Tribune.
PharmaCann now has 15 days to come up with the fee and the escrow account or surety bond, for a total of $2.2 million. But that shouldn’t be a problem, given that the company sold $20 million in securities last fall.
Illinois has been tight-fisted when it comes to the number of business licenses it will award. Under state law, there will eventually be 60 dispensaries and 21 cultivation facilities. So far, 70 total licenses have been issued.
