Medical marijuana sales in Arkansas have reached more than $6 million since the first sales May 10.

A report from the Department of Finance and Administration:

 Since Doctor’s Orders (Hot Springs) first opened on Friday, May 10, the company sold a total of 114.32 pounds of medical marijuana.

 

Since Green Springs Medical (Hot Springs) first opened on Sunday, May 12, the company sold a total of 374.96 pounds of medical marijuana.

 

 Since Arkansas Natural Products (Clinton) first opened on Thursday, June 20, the company sold a total of 69.56 pounds of medical marijuana.

 

 Since Greenlight Dispensary (Helena) first opened on Thursday, June 27, the company sold a total of 35.85 pounds of medical marijuana.

 

In the 82 days since medical marijuana sales began in Arkansas, the six open dispensaries have sold a total of 574 pounds of marijuana, earning a total of $4.01 million, the Department of Finance and Administration announced today. (That averages, I think, to nearly $49,000 a day, but check my math.)

Here’s the rundown by most product sold (though not averaged over days open):

Green Springs Medical, opened May 12, Hot Springs, 305.15 pounds.

Doctors Order’s, opened May 10, Hot Springs, 104.25 pounds

Native Green Wellness, opened July 2, Hensley, 64.40 pounds

Arkansas Natural Products, opened June 20, Clinton, 48.89 pounds

Fiddler’s Green, opened July 11, Mountain View, 26.50 pounds

Qualified patients now have limited access to medical cannabis products, after the state’s first licensed dispensaries began making sales this week. Voters initially approved medical cannabis access by passing a statewide initiative in November 2016.

As Arkansas dispensaries continue to sell the first harvest of medical marijuana, cultivators and patients are looking toward edibles as the next stage of production.

Advocates say edibles are a more controlled way to consume the drug and that they think demand is high. It’s not clear when edibles might become available, what types will be produced or how much they will cost, but cultivators and dispensaries are limited in what kinds they can manufacture and how they can package them, said Department of Finance and Administration spokesman Scott Hardin.

Voters approved a medical marijuana amendment in 2016. Only two dispensaries, both in Hot Springs, are licensed and only one cultivator has harvested a crop, though two others expect to harvest their own this summer.

With the harvest of the state’s first legal cannabis crop just days away, sales of medical marijuana in Arkansas should begin in mid-May, according to government regulators. Department of Finance and Administration spokesman Scott Hardin said on Friday that a dispensary in Hot Springs should receive final approval for its license to sell medical marijuana within the next two weeks and a second retailer in the city should be inspected in about a week. Eventually, there will be 32 licensed dispensaries to serve the state.

As the state’s first medical marijuana dispensaries gear up to open their doors, Arkansas legislators have been pondering just how they’ll be able to advertise their wares. On Tuesday, Governor Asa Hutchinson will be passing a bill that would curtail the places and people to which medical marijuana businesses are allowed to market.

From the outside, the $6 million BOLD Team medical marijuana cultivation facility looks a bit like a prison and smells like a skunk. A sniffing, and naive, reporter thought the smell was coming from its mammalian source just outside the concertina-wired fence that surrounds the nursery in a fallow field in the middle of Cotton Plant (Woodruff County), but a savvy photographer set her straight.

Things are brighter on the inside, with long rooms of healthy, green plants nurtured and tended scientifically, with special grow lights, thermostats and air measuring devices, and vats of varying mixes of liquid fertilizer. Fans to blow air over the plants, fans to remove exhaust. A laboratory and a Brandeis University-trained chemist. A computer monitor tracking humidity fluctuations.

Arkansas regulators have announced that they have formally awarded all 32 licenses for cannabis dispensaries that will operate under the state’s medical marijuana program. Officials at the Department of Finance and Administration said on Tuesday that all 32 licensees approved last month paid the required $15,000 licensing fee and have posted a $100,000 performance bond. Scott Hardin, a spokesman for the department, said the dispensaries are now authorized to begin serving patients.