Pubdate: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 Source: Boston Herald (MA) Copyright: 2014 The Boston Herald, Inc Contact: http://news.bostonherald.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/53 Note: Prints only very short LTEs. Authors: Matt Stout and John Zaremba DELEO WANTS POT SHOP REVIEW PROCESS REWOUND State health regulators are resisting calls to redo the licensing process for Massachusetts' first-ever medical marijuana dispensaries - - even after House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo urged them to start over amid concerns the selection team never fact checked the winning applications. DeLeo, worried about applicants who gave false or misleading statements about support from local officials, urged the Department of Health to "take a look at all the applications once again, especially those that were successful, and put those through the vetting process." "And if need be, if these stories continue that these applications were not vetted, there may be a need at some point to start the process over again," DeLeo said. The Department of Public Health again said yesterday that none of the 20 tentatively chosen has a final permit - a mantra the agency has repeated since doubts over the review process emerged earlier this month - and that an "intensive verification process" is ongoing. "No one has a license - provisional or otherwise - to operate a dispensary in Massachusetts," health department spokesman David Kibbe said in a statement. "We are in the middle of an intensive verification process with the 20 applicants who have moved into this next phase, and we have been clear that anyone found to have lied or misrepresented information in their application will not get a license." The Herald reported last week that applicants' letters of local support or neutrality were not verified until after the provisional licenses were awarded, and reviews of winning applications uncovered numerous other problems. Among them: Criminal background checks failed to find a felony drug conviction for a key financier of a proposed Roxbury dispensary; the prospective security officer for a Salem pot shop submitted what his current employer, Massport, called an exaggerated resume; and the medical director of proposed dispensaries in Brookline and Northampton is a former DPH official who helped write the state's medical marijuana regulations. Also yesterday, the DPH brushed off a losing bidder's lawsuit that seizes on such problems and wants to block the agency from awarding the final licenses. "This lawsuit is frivolous, and we will seek to get it dismissed quickly," Kibbe said. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom