What to Know
- An Arizona-based cannabis company is acquiring a local company with marijuana licenses in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
- The CannaPharmacy deal will bring Harvest Health & Recreation's total up to 213 marijuana business licenses, including 130 retailers.
An Arizona-based vertically integrated cannabis company is bringing its $500 million war chest and rolling up marijuana dispensaries and grow/manufacture operations on the East Coast with an agreement to acquire a local company with marijuana licenses in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Phoenix-based Harvest Health & Recreation announced the deal to acquire CannaPharmacy Inc. in a press release, Tuesday. Terms of the deal, which is subject to state regulatory approval, were not disclosed. CannaPharmacy operates in Pennsylvania as Franklin Labs and in New Jersey as Garden State Dispensary.
Franklin Labs is one of two firms granted marijuana grow/manufacture licenses in southeastern Pennsylvania in 2017. Its chairman, John Hanger, previously served as Gov. Tom Wolf’s secretary of policy and planning, and as secretary of environmental protection in former Gov. Rendell’s administration. He was an unsuccessful candidate for governor of Pennsylvania in 2013, when his platform included support for medical marijuana.
Franklin Labs' operating record in Pennsylvania has not been marked by impressive retail impact. Since acquiring a license in June 2017 and announcing plans to grow cannabis inside a former Pepsi warehouse in Reading, the company failed to ship a single seed, stem or bud of cannabis, according to Philly.com. In October, CannaPharmacy temporarily offered its license for sale. This despite more than 10,000 Pennsylvania residents applying to the state's medical marijuana program in the six months following its licensure.
For more on the cannabis company's new deal, click here.
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