Latest medical marijuana dispensary opens in Strip District
Pittsburgh’s second major medical marijuana dispensary opened its doors Tuesday, the latest mile marker for Pennsylvania’s fast-growing program to provide people with certain medical conditions access to the still-illegal plant.
Located in the former home of a Chinese grocery in the 2100 block of Penn Avenue in the Strip District, Cresco Yeltrah’s 3,600-square-foot CY+ dispensary will be among the largest in the state. The building also will house the company’s corporate offices.
Cresco Yeltrah co-founder Trent Hartley said the company chose the Strip District siteto save local customers a 2½-hour trip to its Butler dispensary, which he said has beenaveraging about 100 patients daily.
About 60 percent of the customers are over 50, he said, with many seeking an alternative to opioids that they had been prescribed for chronic pain or other ailments. Some had been taking up to 360 OxyContin monthly.
With the current push to rein in the opioid crisis, some customers have told Cresco staff that their doctors have cut back their monthly prescriptions by twothirds, he said. “They came in panicking and some came in crying.”
Cresco Yeltrah is one of the state’s major players in Pennsylvania’s quickly growing medical marijuana program, one of the few organizations that won permits to both cultivate medical marijuana and sell it in up to three dispensaries.
Cresco Yeltrah (Yeltrah is “Hartley” spelled backward) has 30 employees at the grow-process facility in Jefferson County, 10-12 staff in Butler and will have about 15 at its Strip District facility.
Its Butler facility was the region’s first dispensary when it opened Feb. 15. The company’s Brookville, Jefferson County, grow-process facility was first to ship medical cannabis.
Mr. Hartley said the management is still deciding where to open a third dispensary, but he hinted that it might be in the Johnstownor Indiana borough area.
“I can’t see people having to drive two hours to get to their medicine.”
Solevo Wellness opened a dispensary in Squirrel Hill in February and Mr. Hartley predicts “a healthy competition” for customers.
“We know them and like them. They are good guys.”
Sam Britz, COO at Solevo, said Tuesday that operation sees about 175 patients daily. Earlier inventory shortages are being resolved now that more cultivators are shipping product. “I think there are more than enough patients for everyone.”
So far, more than 45,000 patients statewide have registered with the medical marijuana program, and nearly half of those have been certified by a physician and purchased the ID card required to purchase the pills,oils, liquids, tinctures or topicals.
“I can see those numbers doubling over the next year,” Mr. Hartley said.
By contrast, Illinois’ medical marijuana program, which began accepting patient applications in September 2014, reported it had 21,800 patients registered
as of June 30, 2017.
Mr. Hartley said the Butler dispensary is profitable, although he didn’t disclose financial details. Despite the program’s remarkable growth, he suggested it’s too soon to know the longterm prospects.
While the number of qualifying patients is booming, medical marijuana entrepreneurs still face challenges due to federal laws that consider marijuana in all forms illegal. Among other things, that means medical marijuana groups cannot claim business deductions on their tax returns.
“We can’t write off anything like a regular business, advertising or anything,” Mr. Hartley said.
Those regulations are also sometimes a moving target.
Last month, a group of permit holders successfully sought an injunction challenging the implementation of the state’s medical marijuana clinical research program.
The group had argued that the state was going to allow state-approved academic clinical research centers, including the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine, to contract directly with outside third parties that would cultivate and dispense medical marijuana.
The permit holders said in some cases those contracts went to groups whose first-round applications came up short.
Over the past two weeks, the House and Senate fashioned bills amending the 2016 law that allows the program to proceed, with the proviso that the state approve the clinical registrants.
Gov. Tom Wolf signed the bill into law Friday.