WA to Close New Marijuana Licensing Round March 31

Washington State’s new round of retail licensing will end with the month of March, the state’s Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) announced on Tuesday in a press release.

And it looks as though the state already has filled its quota, even though the licensing round is technically still open for a few more weeks.

“We are at the point where the number of highest priority applicants will exceed the number of available retail licenses,” LCB Licensing Division Director Becky Smith said in the release. “We’ll meet the retail cap with priority ones and twos that we’re already processing.”

The new licensing round, which began last October, has produced a total of 1,270 applications, with just 222 new licenses up for grabs.

Of those, 162 qualify as Priority 1, which means the applicant is a medical cannabis dispensary that’s been in operation since before 2013, has a history of paying taxes and obeying local laws, and applied for a rec license before July 2014. Another 63 are Priority 2, meaning any other MMJ dispensary that didn’t apply for a rec license but has a history of paying taxes and obeying the law.

A whopping 879 applicants are Priority 3, which means they just don’t fit into either of the other two categories.