Vermont issues fifth medical marijuana business license

Vermont may soon see its medical marijuana dispensary total double thanks to a law designed to expand the state’s small MMJ program.

PhytoScience Institute has been granted a preliminary MMJ dispensary license, according to The Barre-Montpelier Times Argus. Once the company meets state regulators’ requirements for full approval, it has six months to acquire the necessary permits and be up and running.

PhytoScience is the fifth company licensed to operate dispensaries in Vermont and the first to be licensed under a law that took effect in June.

That new MMJ regulation allows licensees to operate two dispensaries under the same permit, and PhytoScience is planning to open dispensaries in Bennington and St. Albans. The new law also means the four existing dispensaries could expand to eight.

And more medical marijuana licensees could be coming, depending on patient counts.

Vermont’s new law allows for a sixth MMJ licensee when the number of registered patients in the state reaches 7,000. There were about 4,609 registered patients as of Aug. 24, the Times Argus reported. That’s up from roughly 2,600 in early 2016, according to the Marijuana Business Factbook 2017.

The state’s MMJ industry got another boost from the new law – the addition of Parkinson’s disease, post-traumatic stress syndrome and Crohn’s disease as qualifying conditions.