Photo from Have A Heart website.
It will likely take a year or more to replace two medical marijuana dispensaries in eastern and western Iowa. Dispensaries in Council Bluffs and Davenport closed without notice on March 30th.
The manager of the Iowa Department of Public Health’s medical cannabis program, Owen Parker, says the licenses of the closed dispensaries operated by the Have a Heart company are no longer valid.
“There’s no management agreement where transfers or anything like that that can be done. The licenses, once they’re closed, are rescinded. It just starts from scratch however many licenses need to be filled,” Parker says.
Parker says Have A Heart ignored the rules of their contract and failed to give six months’ notice. He says if the company had given proper notice — the re-opening process could have been faster. Parker says the license application process will be underway soon.
“And then we will award the license to somebody which then is when they would move forward with their buildout, so from beginning to end you can’t really put an exact timetable on it, it’s easy to say a year or more in all reality, ” according to Parker.
Patients will have to get their medical marijuana products from the remaining dispensaries in Sioux City, Waterloo, or Des Moines.
(By Pat Blank, Iowa Public Radio)