Green Leaf Medical's Manchester marijuana production facility
After opening Richmond's first licensed medical marijuana production facility in May, Green Leaf Medical aims to debut its projects on dispensary shelves this fall.
With operations in Pennsylvania, Ohio and its home state of Maryland, the medical marijuana producer moved into Virginia this year with an 82,000-square-foot cultivation and extraction lab at 2804 Decatur St. in Manchester. The company will spend this summer growing various cannabis strains at the facility, with its first harvest in September.
CBD (cannabidiol) and THC-A (tetrahydrocannabinol acid) oils produced from the marijuana plants will then be processed into edibles, vaporization cartridges and tinctures to sell in dispensaries this October, Green Leaf Medical CEO Philip Goldberg says. Once harvesting is underway, Goldberg expects the Manchester facility to produce around 2,000 pounds of dry-weight cannabis per month.
“We've been doing this in other states for many years now, and we are going to work to bring the product to patients as fast as possible,” Goldberg says. “We're definitely excited. It's been two-plus years of work just on Virginia to get to the point where we are right now, and we're excited to get the ball rolling.”
Green Leaf Medical was licensed in 2018 by the Virginia Board of Pharmacy to produce and sell medical marijuana products in a health service area comprising 27 cities and counties, including Richmond, Chesterfield, Henrico and Hanover.
Current state law allows doctors, nurse practitioners and physician assistants to certify their patients to use CBD or THC-A oils. Licensed producers are not allowed to sell marijuana flowers, and doses from their products cannot exceed 10 milligrams of THC, the psychoactive component in cannabis that causes a high.
Green Leaf’s Virginia pharmacy director, Trey Blankinship
The company has already built a dispensary location on the ground floor of its Manchester facility, and it’s authorized to build five additional dispensaries in its service area. As it awaits clearer regulations around dispensary sites, the company hasn’t yet settled on its other locations. Goldberg says he’s prioritizing storefronts with ample parking and plans to make at least one location a “super-center” dispensary. The company also will offer home deliveries.
“We've been looking in Short Pump, Midlothian, all over the place in our region, [but] we're a little hesitant to pull the trigger until we have some confirmation about what the regulations are in the state with regards to the location of these patient access points,” Goldberg says.
As of late May, Green Leaf Medical had around 25 employees in Manchester, though Goldberg expects to hire between 250 to 300 workers in Virginia by this time next year.
“A vast majority of the work really starts once you begin harvesting,” he says. “You need excessive manpower for that, so we have a lot of hiring to do between now and the next four months.”
Native Richmonder Trey Blankinship oversees the Manchester facility as Green Leaf’s Virginia pharmacy director. He says he first noticed the popularity of CBD-based products while working as a pharmacist at CVS and is now thrilled to be at the forefront of medical marijuana expansion in Virginia.
“I was drawn to the cannabis industry because I truly believe in it as a medicine and that it can help people,” he says. “I know there’s a huge market for it, just from what I’ve seen at CVS.”