When it comes to medical marijuana, the D.C. government is handing out two different kinds of licenses. The News4 Iteam has already shown the proposed sites to grow medical marijuana, which are called cultivation centers, and now we have the list of dispensary applications -- where people will go to buy medical marijuana.
If you want medical marijuana in Washington, D.C., you will need to get a prescription from a doctor and buy it from a licensed dispensary. The News4 Iteam mapped out where 17 different dispensaries want to locate -- neighborhoods like the Palisades, Takoma Park, Eastern Market, Ivy City and Anacostia.
"It's a facility to provide medication to patients,” said applicant and former talk show host Montel Williams. “This isn't some place for people to run out and get high."
Williams wants to set up a dispensary on Columbia Road in Adam's Morgan. He's also applied for two cultivation center licenses in a building on Queens Chapel Road in Northeast, which he said will create jobs and improve the neighborhood.
"We're looking at a facility that No. 1 right now is a blighted building,” Williams said. “It's a building that was burned out. This building is now the perfect building to put together what we're proposing, and that's a greenhouse that could be an urban farm."
"Rehab the buildings for themselves, yeah,” Jackie Manning said. “Bring jobs, no, because they're not required to hire in the city."
Manning is an ANC commissioner for 5B, where 24 cultivation centers and three different dispensaries have applied to set up shop -- by far the highest concentration in any one neighborhood. Her neighbors all agree they're worried about crime and don't want any of the facilities in their community.
"They don't want it,” Manning said. “Bottom line: They don't want it. Why is it that we're always considered the dumping ground?"
We have put together this map of all the dispensary locations so you can read the applications yourself. You can also see where they're located in comparison to the cultivation centers.
The Health Department is in charge of determining who will actually get a license and had announced it would start deciding who would get the 10 cultivation licenses and five dispensary licenses in the next month.
But we've been told by several sources that they've missed some of their internal deadlines, which may force the agency to push back their final decision.
Follow NBC Washington to get the latest news, events and entertainment anytime, anywhere: on air, online, and on Facebook // Twitter.
