BOYNTON’S 1ST MEDICAL POT DISPENSARY SET TO OPEN

Trulieve will open each day of week, expects to start early this month.

Boynton Beach’s first medical marijuana dispensary, called Trulieve, will operate seven days a week and is expected to open early this month. The store’s opening comes almost two years after Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana in 2016. Trulieve signed a lease in September 2017 for the store’s location at Woolbright Road and Southwest Eighth Street — sharing building space with Motor City Pizza and Joey’s Home Bakery. The store is also within a shopping plaza that has a Home Depot, Staples, Dunkin’ Donuts and Burger King. The company plans for an opening date within the first week of October, but they are still waiting on permits, said a Trulieve spokeswoman, Victoria Walker. Hours of operation will be 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Walker said. The Tallahassee-based company already has 17 dispensaries, stretching from Miami to Pensacola, and is the biggest out of seven cannabis growers that have licenses to sell medical marijuana to Florida patients. Boynton Beach opened the Florida Medical Marijuana Health Center last year on 700 W. Boynton Beach Blvd, that administers marijuana cards. The center has two Boca Raton doctors who specialize in medical marijuana and evaluate patients interested in using the medicine. These doctors are among about 130 in Palm Beach County and 1,000 statewide who have passed a course allowing them to make recommendations for medical marijuana use to the state, according to the Florida Department of Health. Patients must register with the state’s Medical Marijuana Use Registry before getting a doctor’s approval. Palm Beach County already has two dispensaries in Lake Worth called Knox Medical and Curaleaf, which are both located on Dixie Highway. In a previous report by The Palm Beach Post, Trulieve negotiated another lease to open a location on Military Trail in central Palm Beach County. It is estimated to open by the end of 2018. Trulieve filed a suit against the Florida Department of Health in April after the state enacted a law limiting the amount of retail operations for cannabis growers to 25. In the suit, Trulieve said that they applied for 27 locations before the state enacted the law and should be allowed to open 52 locations throughout Florida.