MILFORD, Ohio — Dispensaries in Ohio are getting ready to sell their first batches of recreational marijuana. It has been a delayed start after it was approved by Ohio voters last year. Dispensaries still have to go through the final steps before it can be put on the shelves. 

What You Need To Know

  • Uplift Ohio, a Cincinnati area dispensary, has been selling medical marijuana out of two dispensaries for the last year

  • Managers there say they're hiring extra workers and making sure there's enough product for when they can start selling recreational marijuana

  • Although recreational marijuana was legalized last year, dispensaries are still waiting for the state's final approval to sell. They're hoping it happens by September

The Uplift Ohio building is surrounded by security cameras, but news cameras were not allowed inside because of what they’re selling inside. It's something that used to be illegal in Ohio: marijuana.

Jeremy Young is the general manager at Uplift Ohio. It’s a cannabis dispensary near Cincinnati.

It’s been legal to sell medical marijuana since 2016, and they’ve been selling it for the last year.

“They're (sales) kind of soft right now, but we we typically, people are on vacation and such, and you know it's about normal, a little softer than usual," Young said.

In a matter of weeks they expect that to change, and they’re getting ready for a lot more business.

“We've increased staff and obviously with that, that comes more cost on our end," Young said. "We've increased our inventory, you know, trying to prepare for that because we don't really know when it's going to happen." 

Voters approved recreational marijuana in Ohio back in November. Even though it’s now legal, Young said they haven’t been able to sell recreational marijuana just yet.

“We've been approved for a provisional license, but that doesn't mean we can sell any product to for adult use yet," Young said. "So it goes through a process. The cultivators have to be approved for adult use as well and the processors before we can sell."

They also had to follow a long list of rules—like having security cameras—to get that license to sell, but they still need the state’s final approval. That’s expected to happen in September, before they can sell their first batch of recreational marijuana.

“We were extremely excited," Young said. "We knew, obviously, there would be more revenue for our company, but we also were excited to be able to expose more of the the state to our our products and what we have to offer."

So far, the Division of Cannabis Control has given provisional licenses to 110 dispensaries statewide. They all would need final approval to start selling recreational marijuana.

 

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