TRENTON – The number of legal cannabis growers in the state will more than double after regulators on Friday issued new licenses designed to ease crippling supply issues for medical marijuana patients and push the state closer to legal weed sales for all adults.
The New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission on Friday voted 4 to 1 to issue 10 new licenses for medical marijuana cultivators and four new licenses for vertically integrated businesses, which grow, manufacture and sell medical marijuana at dispensaries.
The cultivation licenses were awarded to:
Hillview Med (North Jersey)
CYOUR NJ LLC (North Jersey)
NJ Nectar Ventures (Central Jersey)
Noble Valley Harvest Company (Central Jersey)
Green Medicine NJ (Central Jersey)
The NAR Group (Central Jersey)
ZY Labs (Central Jersey)
Bloom Medicinals of PA (South Jersey)
Garden State Releaf (South Jersey)
The four vertically integrated licenses were awarded to:
Etain NJ (North Jersey)
Altus New Jersey (Central Jersey)
Holistic NJ (Central Jersey)
Greenhouse Wellness of NJ (South Jersey)
The CRC did not release information about the licensees except for the region of the state in which they intended to operate.
“Approving additional cannabis growing, processing and dispensary licenses in the state will immensely help the program, providing patients with more variety and reducing their travel time to obtain their medicine,” Etain CEO Amy Peckam said. “We cannot wait to bring our high-quality products and formulations to the patients and customers of New Jersey.”
CRC Executive Director Jeff Brown said the goal was to ease supply and demand issues faced by the state’s 117,000 registered medical marijuana patients. Initially, the state was only set to issue five cultivation permits — but Brown asked commissioners to approve the 10 licenses as a way to kickstart the process.
By the state’s own estimates, there should be 26 medical marijuana cultivators and 61 dispensaries to handle that number of patients, Brown said. Instead, the state has just 23 active dispensaries selling cannabis grown by only 10 operators.
