Marijuana pharmacy applicant suing over New Orleans location 'improperly' landing license

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"Roy is asking the court to vacate the board’s decision awarding the medical marijuana license for the region to H&W Drug Store, the fourth-place finisher in a competitive selection process. The application review committee that ranked H&W fourth recommended the board pick Roy’s firm for the region’s license. According to the suit, the head of the committee told Rx Greenhouse it was the highest-ranked applicant in the state."

"You don’t see boards going against the recommendations of subcommittees, unless there’s something major," Roy said, adding he's served on boards of pharmacy elsewhere. "You just don’t see it. It doesn’t happen. It's usually a formality to bring it before the board for a vote."

"Ruston Henry, the owner of H&W Drug Store in New Orleans, made an impassioned speech on the day of the board vote last month, asking board members to reject the three applicants ranked ahead of him and award him the license for the region. Henry pitched his company as the longest continuously-operating African-American-owned pharmacy in New Orleans. The speech apparently won over the hearing panel, which picked H&W for the region's exclusive permit."

This isn't just a New Orleans issue because apparently in Houma the same thing happened.

"Peter Prevot’s Bayou Therapeutic Pharmacy was ranked first by the selection committee in the Houma region, but the board passed over his company in favor of the third-place firm.

“We were completely blindsided,” Prevot, a New Orleans-based CPA who has worked with medical marijuana firms elsewhere, said.

Prevot raised many of the same questions that Rx Greenhouse’s lawsuit raised, including the biggest underlying question of why the board passed over the higher-ranked applicants. Prevot said he decided not to take legal action against the board because he didn’t want to delay the process, and indicated a desire to potentially operate in the medical marijuana space in Louisiana in the future. Still, he suggested he believes he would have a case."