Random drawing for Rapid City’s medical marijuana dispensaries set for March 9 | Local

Potential Rapid City medical cannabis dispensary owners are about to find out if they’ll be one of 15 marijuana businesses to operate in Rapid City.

The state Medical Cannabis Program will perform a random drawing for state licenses at 3 p.m. Central/2 p.m. Mountain March 9 in Pierre.

The Rapid City Council determined 15 medical marijuana dispensaries would be the limit based on the city’s population on a 7-1 vote in September. In order to enter the state’s lottery, potential businesses had to submit paperwork to the state by Dec. 31 and have a provisional license issued by the city. The city’s Finance Office issued about 30 provisional licenses by the end of December.

Businesses that receive a license will have one year to get the dispensary up and running, according to the city’s ordinance that went into effect in October. A license costs $5,000 with $1,500 for the nonrefundable application fee and $3,500 for the license itself. Licenses will have to be renewed each year with a $5,000 fee.

Dispensaries must be at least 1,000 feet from public or private schools. Dispensaries can operate within 500 feet of a child care center, church, public park or property zoned as residential, if it was previously granted a conditional use permit. 

The drawing will be held at South Dakota Lottery on the third floor of the Dolly-Reed Plaza at 711 East Wells Avenue in Pierre. The public can watch the drawing through a viewing window or by video conference. The link can be found at medcannabis.sd.gov.

The state drew applications for dispensary certifications for Yankton on Jan. 25. According to the South Dakota Medical Cannabis establishment lottery process, the Department of Health will list the applicant business names in alphabetical order and assign a number to each applicant. The lottery random number generator will be used to generate a series of numbers using the same numbers assigned to establishments.

According to the procedures, the lottery drawing manager, drawing security officer and drawing auditor will conduct the lottery. The manager will check the seals on the machine, boot up the machine, log in, enter the name of the manager, enter the parameters, the auditor’s name, perform a self-test, pick draw, print the report and log off.