Jacob Ogles
Trulieve, the leading medical marijuana company in Florida, will open its 20th location on Friday.
“With twenty locations statewide, and more on track to open in the coming months, we will be able to bring safe and effective care to the patients who need it most,” said Trulieve CEO Kim Rivers, “including those who may have been unable to make it to a physical location before.”
Rivers will attend the opening of the Sarasota dispensary on North Beneva Road.
Any company licensed to sell medical cannabis in the state may have up to 30 dispensaries, so this puts Trulieve two-thirds of the way toward its total allowed number.
It also means Trulieve runs about a third of all dispensaries now doing business in Florida. The company figures, based on Department of Health information, it is sitting on about 68 percent of the market share in the state.
The location in Sarasota will be the first dispensary within city limits, even though competitor AltMed has its national headquarters in the city. That company ultimately opened its first Sarasota location outside of town in August while Sarasota officials wrestled with its regulations before approving the first dispensary in town.
Trulieve plans to open its 30th dispensary by the end of January. On Tuesday, the company opened its first Broward County location in Dania Beach. It now has shops from Pensacola to Miami.
Of course, the company also delivers its product statewide.
Florida law requires companies that run dispensaries to sell product cultivated by the same company. As a “seed to sale” business, Trulieve was able to quickly become the first and largest medical marijuana company operating in Florida.
And demand grows as well. The state Office of Medical Marijuana Use official patient registry now includes more than 172,000 users.
