Great Barrington — After a torturous and expensive foray through the zoning and regulatory jungle, Prospect Lake, a medical marijuana dispensary approved at the 2014 Annual Town Meeting, has stopped trying to navigate the state’s licensing process after losing its lawsuit against the Department of Public Health (DPH) and its now former commissioner, Cheryl Bartlett.
The dispensary was set to open in the former CrossFit space on Gas House Lane, a building owned by the Gilmore’s of Gilmore Heating and Plumbing.
After the DPH denied approval for a provisional license to operate, Prospect Lake filed suit, alleging inconsistency in the way the DPH scored its dispensary application. It is one of several dozen lawsuits that were filed over the controversial licensing application process.
Complaints about the process abounded, and Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration and new commissioner, Monica Bharel, have since overhauled the system, yet only one dispensary has opened since Massachusetts voters said yes to medical marijuana in 2012.
The Suffolk County Superior Court clerk’s office said that Prospect Lake, LLC’s suit is still active. But Great Barrington resident and former Prospect Lake board member Craig Elliot told The Edge that the nonprofit dispensary company is shuttered, and that its founder and president, Dr. Michael Marino, has moved to Thailand after selling both his Alford home and New York City apartment.
“It’s over; it’s done,” Elliot said. “The judge threw it out, and we were asked to re-apply.”
But Elliot says that isn’t happening, especially since Marino, a former cancer researcher who worked for Sloan-Kettering, spent $100,000 on the application process and the lawsuit, all of which involved consultants and “mostly lawyers.”
“I don’t think he wants to spend any more money on this,” Elliot added. “And I’m not sure it could survive here.”
The proposed dispensary did have the support of Town Meeting voters in 2014, two-thirds of whom said yes despite a bit of public grumpiness from police chief William Walsh on the issue. At the meeting, Walsh angrily declared that he would not allow any of his officers to work as security personnel for the proposed medical marijuana dispensary, despite the overwhelming approval of the dispensary.
Marino and other former board members could not be reached for comment. Prospect Lake’s attorney, Michael Cutler of EvansCutler in Northampton, did not return calls. EvansCutler specializes in medical marijuana law.
The lawsuit claimed, in part, that the DPH gave Prospect Lake’s application different scores than other applications that had “identical or indistinguishable” responses to questions.
Former DPH commissioner, Cheryl Bartlett, resigned amid several controversies during her 16-month tenure, including dispensary application issues that, in one case, alleged favoritism in the granting of provisional licenses that were later rescinded as accusations flew over what were obvious scoring irregularities.
“We feel that virtually identical sections that were almost verbatim copies between groups were scored completely differently,” Marino told WBUR in Boston last year.
“So we don’t understand that. We call it disparate scoring.”
The new application guidelines were unveiled in May, and applications are no longer scored, but must comply with state regulations. A glance at the guidelines reveals what appears to be less danger of inconsistency.
The first dispensary in the state opened in Salem in June, after the state granted a waiver to forgo its exhaustive testing regulations, so that the dispensary, in the absence of labs that were ready to do the testing, could start to give small amounts of the drug to patients.
“The biggest problem [dispensaries] have right now is the purity of the product,” Elliot said of the testing issue.
Then he pointed to Massachusetts-style control.
“It’s not California, and it’s not Colorado,” Elliot said. “I’m surprised about New York State [dispensaries] opening in 6 months. I’m saying good luck. The rules change constantly.”
“I feel sorry for these guys who have laid out a million and haven’t opened the doors.”
