370 vie for 60 dispensary spots in Ohio

The state has received about six applications to run a medical-marijuana dispensary for every store it plans to open.

The Ohio Board of Pharmacy on Monday said that it had received 370 applications to operate the 60 dispensaries that the state hopes to have up and running in about a year. The deadline for applications was Friday.

In planning the dispensaries, the state wants them spread across the state. The southeastern Ohio region, of which Franklin County is a part, will be the site of 17 dispensaries — five of them in Franklin County.

Competition for those five slots will be stiff, with 69 businesses filing applications to supply medical marijuana in the county. In several instances, however, individual businesses filed more than one application. The list the pharmacy board released Monday did not give addresses for the proposed dispensaries.

Grant Miller, a spokesman for the board of pharmacy, said the board has not set a deadline for reviewing the applications and deciding which businesses will get licenses.

A separate agency, the Ohio Department of Commerce, is in the process of awarding licenses to grow medical marijuana. Earlier this month, it announced that it had awarded 11 licenses for grow operations of 3,000 square feet or smaller. It is expected to soon award a dozen licenses for operations of up to 24,000 square feet.