Local medical marijuana cultivation center grows alternate forms of healing

Thirty states and Washington D.C. have legalized the use of medical marijuana, and now, the path to getting it into the hands of patients grows shorter for Ohio.

Ohio’s medical marijuana program was first established on September 8, 2016, after House Bill 523 established the basic framework to implement the program over a two year period.

Ohio issued the first certificate of operation on June 29, to a medical marijuana cultivator in Ravenna Township. FN Group Holdings, doing business as Wellfield Springs, is the first of 25 cultivators to receive provisional licenses to grow medical marijuana.

“Each applicant had a deadline to submit an application, and then the application information is available online,” Kerry Francis, Chief of Communications at the Ohio Department of Commerce said. “Then we had different scoring teams that scored the different pieces of the application and it was a blind scoring process. So the people that were scoring the different applications did not know who had applied.”

FN Group Holdings is owned by the Hobson family: Claire Hobson, COO, Thomas Hobson, CEO and Spencer Hobson, CSM. Claire Hobson returned to Ohio because her grandmother suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, who was her motivation behind opening the grow site because she did not want to take opioids. Hobson said medical marijuana also helps patients with epilepsy and chronic pain.

“I want to be able to help people like my grandmother,” Hobson said.

The cultivation center, surrounded by a chain link fence with barbed wire at the top, does not give the impression of a medical marijuana grow site. But, security is one of the necessary precautions the Ohio Department of Commerce takes to ensure safety and security.

“We do have security requirements that all of the licensees have to demonstrate, different security protocols that they have to have in place,” Francis said. “At the corner of our program is the safety of the public, the safety of patients and providing a safe medical product to them. One of the requirements in there is that they do have to have security cameras that the department can access 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

FN Group Holdings is one of 12 “Level 2” growers licensed to grow medical marijuana in up to 3,000 square feet of space. Thirteen “Level 1” growers have also received provisional licenses to grow in up to 25,000 square feet. Different levels determine the size of the grow sites cultivation area. A “Level 2” grower is permitted to operate a 1,600 square footage cultivation area while a “Level 1” grower is permitted to operate a 15,000 square footage cultivation area.

Francis said a deadline of September 8, 2018, was set by the state legislature for the program to be fully operational. FN Group Holding’s grow site was the only cultivation center to receive their certificate of operation by this deadline.

“We received our license to grow back in the end of June,” Hobson said.

Ohio’s current medical marijuana program has been two years in the making before becoming fully operational. Each cultivation center is an individually owned business and is responsible for passing inspections before they are permitted to grow.

Before cultivation centers worried about passing inspections the state of Ohio had to build a framework for them to follow.

“A lot goes into that, we have to develop rules and the way Ohio’s rule process works is we have to draft the rules, then we have to get stakeholder input, then it goes through two additional processes where stakeholders can provide input through the Common Sense Initiative and then the Joint Committee and Agency Rule Review. And then once the rules are adopted it takes some time for those to go into effect,” Francis said.

Although FN Group Holdings received their certificate of operations, they will continue to face inspections every 90 days to ensure they are in compliance with the Ohio Department of Commerce’s rules and regulations. Afterall, the primary goal of Ohio’s medical marijuana program is to help patients in need.

“A patient has to visit a physician who is certified to recommend medical marijuana,” Francis said, “they have to have 1 of 21 qualifying conditions. If the doctor recommends medical marijuana and they recommend but don’t prescribe it then they register under the patient and caregiver registry and get a medical marijuana card and they have to present that card with a photo ID at the dispensary.”

Some of the qualifying conditions include:

• Cancer
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease)
• HIV/AIDS

All 21 are listed on the Cleveland Clinic’s website.

Once cultivated, the medicine can be dispensed to patients in the form of the flower, ointment or pills. All forms are tested by the Ohio Department of Commerce before reaching the hands of patients.

“The cultivator grows the medical marijuana, then a processor turns it into a form that is ready for use by patients. Those forms are approved and listed on the website,” Francis said.

Then the testing lab checks for potency and contamination, after it is sent to a dispensary where patients with a medical marijuana card can easily get access to the care they need.

 

Ohio is one of 30 states to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes in hopes of creating positive change in people’s lives.

“I think it could help change people’s lives for the better,” Hobson said.

A Ravenna Township medical marijuana cultivation center is the first in Ohio to grow alternate forms of healing. @addie_gall and I report. https://t.co/jgZ3WCBZhX

— Erin Keller✨ (@ErinKell79) October 24, 2018

Story by Addie Gall and Erin Keller

Featured Photo by Addie Gall

Google Map by Erin Keller