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Medical marijuana growing facility coming to Lebanon

WP Health Foundry site.JPG

The future site of WP Health Foundry, a state certified medical marijuana growing and processing company, located at 113 N. Eighth Ave., Lebanon, Aug. 1, 2018. The growing and processing plant is expected to be operational by early 2019. (Merriell Moyer/Lebanon Daily News)

The city of Lebanon will likely soon be home to a medical marijuana growing and processing facility.

Whole Plants LLC, a company based in Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania, was issued one of the remaining 13 permits for growing and processing medical marijuana in Pennsylvania on July 31.

“We are one of 25 permitted grower-processors,” James Smith, CEO of Whole Plants, said. “One of the requirements as part of the application was that you had to have an identified site (for the facility) and you had to have control of the site.”

Smith’s company purchased a vacant steel foundry at 113 N. Eighth Ave. in November 2017 with the intent of converting it into a growing and processing facility.

Pennsylvania has a good business climate for the medical marijuana industry because of the limited number of grower-processor permits issued by the state, unlike states such as Oregon where permits are unlimited, Smith said.

“The good news for the city of Lebanon is that this will be an economic development project which will provide not only the construction jobs, but also the permanent jobs for the city,” Smith said. “The mayor of Lebanon, Sherry Capello, has been extremely supportive and we really appreciate her support for this project because it will bring a good economic impact into the city of Lebanon.”

After meeting with representatives from Whole Plants in April, Capello said she felt comfortable they would comply with the state’s requirements.

“Their growing process would be extremely secure and would operate in a ‘clean room’ with a controlled atmosphere,” Capello said via email. “The people involved with the company are reported to be the best in their fields from botanists to chemists.”

The facility, called WP Health Foundry, will eventually employ up to 131 employees with family-sustaining wages, according to Capello.

“Additionally, they propose to create a foundation with a broad scope that targets several issues facing our community, not limited to: workforce development, continuing education (scholarships), business development and entrepreneurship, assistance to diverse individuals and the opioid epidemic,” Capello said.

Six months to opening

Smith expects the facility to be operational in roughly six months. Medical marijuana products produced by the facility will be available on dispensary shelves about nine months later.

“It is about a nine-month process where we grow the plants, we extract the medicine, we package it, we test it – testing is a big part of it,” Smith said. “We have our own testing facility and then the state has its own testing facility as well, so the medicine will be tested twice before it gets put on the shelves of dispensaries for consumption by patients.”

The facility will produce a wide range of medical marijuana products including the plant’s oil, which Smith said can be taken orally, as well as pills, creams, waxes, balms, tinctures, sprays and resin, according to Smith.

As of Aug. 1, leaf product has also been approved by the state Department of Health for production and eventual sale in dispensaries.

WP Health Foundry is expected to use an extraction process developed by former Lebanon resident and Lebanon Valley College alumni, Dr. Jeffrey Raber.

“He went to California – he’s been there for 30 years – and he has become extremely successful in the extraction process of medical marijuana,” Smith said. “He has patents and he’s a leader in the cannabis industry. He was one of the people that the Pennsylvania legislature asked to testify in their deliberation over whether or not to legalize marijuana in Pennsylvania.”

Raber runs his own company, Scientific Holdings – which does not grow medical marijuana, but instead developed a patented method to extract medicine from the plant material – and Whole Plants has agreements in place to use the same extraction process that Raber and his company use.

Raber has been successfully extracting medical marijuana ever since its use has been legalized in states such as California and Oregon, according to Smith.

“I believe (Raber’s association) is a key component of why the Department of Health granted us a permit is because of his experience,” Smith said.

Whole Plants, which was incorporated in 2016, has some experience in the medical marijuana industry since its founders also own a medical marijuana business in Oregon.

“The initial effort was going to be to have the Oregon company apply in Pennsylvania, but because the state laws are dramatically different and the regulations between different states that are legalizing marijuana are so dramatically different, the decision was made to incorporate a separate company for purposes of applying in Pennsylvania,” Smith said.

Many of the founding partners of Whole Plants are members of the Oregon company, Oregon Medicinal Growers, or OMG, according to Smith.

“We will have a brand that we manufacture and put on the shelves in Pennsylvania called OMG because that was the name of the original company,” Smith said. “There is no legal connection between that company and the Pennsylvania company other than some common ownership.”

Federal law does not permit the transportation of medical marijuana products across state lines, so product manufactured in Oregon cannot be shipped to Pennsylvania and vice versa, according to Smith.

Despite its founders’ background with the medical marijuana industry, Whole Plants had some difficulty getting a permit.

“It has been a good process, but I wouldn’t call it smooth for us because we did not get a permit in round one,” Smith said. “From our standpoint that was not smooth, but it may have been the best thing that ever happened to us because it forced us to go back to the drawing board and look at our company and say, ‘What are we missing?’”

The state issued permits for grower-processors in two rounds – the first occurred June 20, 2017.

After being unsuccessful in the first round, Whole Plants added partners to its roster, including Jahan Marcu, a New York resident who ran a nonprofit called

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