On August 3, 2012, Will Humble, Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, posted the following on his blog:
Next Tuesday (August 7) is “Selection Tuesday” for our medical marijuana dispensary applicants. By the end of the day, we’ll have whittled the initial pool of 486 medical marijuana dispensary applications down to 99. We won’t be allocating the full allotment of 126 Registration Certificates on Tuesday because 27 of our Community Health Analysis Areas had no applicant at all- leaving 99 Community Health Analysis Areas with at least 1 applicant. About 75 of the 99 had 2 or more applicants- so we’ll have about 75 drawings on Tuesday. We’ll post an updated summary of how many eligible applications there are by district on our website before the drawing.
We’ll be using a device that blows pre-labeled ping pong type balls inside of a clear cage to randomly select the successful applicant in each competitive area. We’ll go CHAA by CHAA starting at #1 and continuing through #126. The agenda for the day is posted on our website (the first selection will begin at 9 am and we’ll finish around 1 pm). Applicants will be e-mailed the number of their ball(s) in advance… and all applicants will be notified of the selection results electronically by Wednesday. The successful applicants will receive their Registration Certificate after they complete their required Dispensary Agent paperwork.
The process will be webcast live on this internet URL and the entire event will be recorded and posted on the ADHS dispensary website. Because of the large number of applicants and the limited capacity of our facility, credentialed media, a few Agency staff and our independent auditors will be the only folks that’ll be invited to the selection location. The Act doesn’t allow us to identify the applicants by name or even business name- so we’ll use application numbers to identify the successful applicants. We’ll also post a table of the successful applicants (by application number) on our dispensary website by the close of business on Tuesday.
Everybody that’s allocated a Dispensary Registration Certificate will have a little less than a year to build out and get an “Approval to Operate”. Keep in mind that an application for Approval to Operate a dispensary is not complete until we get a written notice that the dispensary and cultivation facility (if it’s in the business plan) is ready for an inspection and they meet our criteria. Our team recently put together some tools to help Registration Certificate holders meet our Approval to Operate criteria, including an Approval to Operate Application Checklist, Approval to Operate Application Instructions, and the Dispensary Inspection Checklist
