Medical marijuana progressing

Grower to provide Ohio’s 1st medical pot in December

EASTLAKE >> Stepping into the small vestibule, visitors are immediately struck by a slightly musty, slightly skunky odor that provides a redolent clue about what’s happening there.

The next clue: An employee takes your identification from behind bulletproof glass and doesn’t give it back until you leave.

Welcome to Eastlakebased Buckeye Relief LLC, the first large marijuana cultivator granted permission by the state to begin growing pot for Ohio’s fledgling medical marijuana industry. The company expects to harvest Ohio’s first legal marijuana at newly built, multi-million dollar state-of-the-art facility sometime in December.

Visitors allowed access to Buckeye Relief’s equally secure growing rooms must wear plastic Tyvek suits to prevent plants from being contaminated. Employees don medical scrubs before entering.

“I’m at the front end of a fascinating and exciting business,” majority owner Andy Rayburn said last week. “The bottom line is, it is actual, helpful medicine. The stories are in abundance.”

The Ohio Legislature approved the creation of a medical marijuana program in June 2016. The law allows residents with at least one of 21 qualifying medical conditions to obtain a doctor’s recommendation to buy marijuana at state-licensed dispensaries. While Ohio missed its Sept. 8 deadline for having medical marijuana available, officials think the program should be operational by the end of the year.

Ohio is among 30 states that now have some form of legalized marijuana.

Buckeye Relief planted its first seeds July 31. After three weeks, 3-inch seedlings were transferred to a vegetation room, where they remained for another three weeks before being placed in one of the facility’s three “adult” rooms after reaching about a foot high. Individual injectors connected to the building’s water room feed each plant with prescribed amounts of water and nutrients.

It’s in the adult rooms where female plants will eventually flower under the warm glow of adjustable LED light bars. Male plants, meanwhile, are removed and destroyed as soon as they’re identified.