Baton Rouge (TNS) — The Louisiana Board of Pharmacy took another step toward licensing medical marijuana pharmacies Tuesday, over the objections of a board member who questioned the process and warned of impending lawsuits if the board moved forward.

The Baton Rouge Advocate reports pharmacists, business people and consultants that are angling for the nine initial permits to dispense medical marijuana in Louisiana made their final pitches to the board ahead of an April 17 meeting where the board could vote to issue the licenses. The board heard from applicants for the New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Houma-Thibodaux and Lafayette regions Tuesday, and is slated to hear from applicants in the remaining regions Wednesday.

The state’s nascent medical marijuana industry is expected to be operating this year, once grow facilities partnered with the LSU and Southern University AgCenters begin production and pharmacies open. A 10th pharmacy permit could be handed out in a high-demand area in the future.

A committee tasked with reviewing the applications, and composed of several pharmacy board members, interviewed all the applicants in January and graded them based on a point system. The applicants for all but two of the regions were ranked by the committee, and several applicants dropped out ahead of Tuesday’s hearing.

Board member Richard Mannino protested the way the board has handled its selections, calling the process “arbitrary and flawed.” That set off a contentious debate among board members, all of whom appeared to disagree with Mannino.

“I think we’re going down the wrong path,” Mannino said.

Mannino hired Seale and Ross, a Hammond-based law firm, to review the selection process, and held up a critical opinion as reason the board should table the issue until it can figure out a better way to evaluate applicants. In an email Friday, Mannino sent the opinion to the board members and said his legal and ethical questions were “more than justified” by it.

In the opinion, Jay Seale wrote the board’s process, while not illegal on its face, creates a risk of lawsuits challenging the validity of the selections and a risk of “negative public opinion about its fairness and impartiality.” Much of the selection criteria used to rank the pharmacy applicants falls outside the scope of the board, he wrote, and could be considered “arbitrary.”

“Right now the losing applicants are going to be highly suspicious of bias,” Seale said in a phone interview.

Some of the selection criteria was subjective and had little to do with the expertise of the pharmacy board members, Seale said. For instance, the criteria included the planned pharmacy’s compatibility with surrounding areas, something he said had nothing to do with the board’s purview.

Mannino pushed to table the selection process temporarily, but the board moved ahead over his objections.

Several board members sharply disagreed with Mannino and defended the lengthy selection process the board has taken. Lawyers for the board also said during the meeting they disagreed with Seale’s conclusions and opinion the process is unethical. The board solicited applications in August and the board’s application review committee interviewed all 44 applicants during meetings in January.

“You’ve got attorneys, we’ve got attorneys also,” said Carl Aron, president of the board.

Aron said Mannino is the only board member who had a problem with the process. All the board members that spoke at the hearing said they disagreed with Mannino’s objections.

Malcom Broussard, executive director of the pharmacy board, declined to comment.

The chairman of the application review committee, Richard Soileau, said during the meeting all the applicants were treated “consistently, professionally and fairly” during his panel’s review process. Soileau declined to comment further after the meeting.

Applicants on Tuesday touted their locations, expertise in medicine and business, and security teams in their proposals to the board. Several said they had personal connections with people who could benefit from medical marijuana, and most had hired consultants from other states with experience in the industry.

• BATON ROUGE AREA: Both remaining applicants for the Baton Rouge region touted letters from District Attorney Hillar Moore supporting their locations, while the first-place finisher, Capitol Wellness Solutions, brought former Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie, who would serve as head of security, to the meeting.
• NEW ORLEANS AREA: Most of the applicants were from Louisiana, though the first-place applicant in the New Orleans region, Sajal Roy, lives in Maryland and operates a medical marijuana dispensary there. His proposal to open a marijuana pharmacy in Louisiana garnered multiple complaints, including one from a nearby playground owner that was withdrawn after Roy said he explained how his facility would operate.
  Another anonymous complaint, which Roy speculated was from the same person, raised questions about Roy’s operations in Maryland, which drew separate complaints there over pricing and led to Roy banning several people from his dispensary.
  “We’ve had a lot of complaints in Maryland around pricing. Pricing is an issue,” he said, noting he operates in a low-income area there, and that prices are set by the state’s 15 growers.
• LAFAYETTE AREA: The two applicants in the Lafayette area were tied in the ranking process and made competing pitches to board members Tuesday.
  One of the pharmacies, Acadiana Therapeutic Remedies, is composed of a group of physicians led by Lafayette Dr. Kevin Duplechain, along with pharmacists, a local medical marijuana advocate and an industry consultant.

The group touted, among other things, its letters of recommendation from high-powered politicians, including Attorney General Jeff Landry, U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy and Louisiana House Speaker Taylor Barras.

The other group, The Apothecary Shoppe, is composed of local pharmacy owner Eric Vidrine, marijuana industry expert and dispensary owner Brian Rudin and pharmacist Kevin LaGrange.

“It’s obvious this region was extremely competitive as evidence by the tie we find ourselves in,” Vidrine said.