Lottery for new medical marijuana dispensaries set for Oct. 29

PROVIDENCE — A long-awaited license lottery to run five of six additional medical marijuana dispensaries will be held Oct. 29 – and live-streamed from a conference room inside the Department of Administration building for the public to watch. 

State regulators announced Friday they were moving ahead with the lottery after a legal appeal from one disqualified applicant, Atlas Enterprises Inc., delayed the process for months. Atlas had applied to run a dispensary in Newport, where zoning laws prohibit such business. 

While that appeal continues, regulators decided to move forward with the license lottery for five other regions around the state. 

The office qualified 24 companies, several of which filed applications for more than one geographical zone. In total 37 applications are in play across the five zones, said Matthew Santacroce, chief of the Office of Cannabis Regulation within the Department of Business Regulation. 

The lottery will use numbered balls, similar to ping-pong balls, that have been weighed and certified, “and a pretty cool Plexiglas tumbler,” to pick the winners, Santacroce said. 

The winners will then have up to nine months to get their retail-only stores operational, though Santacroce said regulators hope some are selling medical marijuana much sooner.

The lottery will be live-streamed for the public to watch, Santacroce said. Applicant representatives will be present.

Rhode Island currently has three medical marijuana dispensaries. The Thomas C. Slater Compassion Center, in Providence; and the Greenleaf Compassion Center, in Portsmouth, opened in 2013. The Summit Medical Compassion Center, in Warwick, opened in 2014.    

Lawmakers in 2019 approved expanding the number of dispensaries to nine to improve access and price competition. 

Email Tom Mooney at tmooney@providencejournal.com