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.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom