With six medical marijuana cultivation center licenses having been granted in late March, this week a six-person city panel gave initial approval to four potential dispensaries.

Of the 17 applicants vying for five dispensary licenses, only four met the basic threshold set by city rules during a first review. Their applications will next be forwarded to the ANCs where they are located for comment, and on June 25 the city will grant licenses to those that make the second cut.

The four dispensaries are spread out across the city—one could be located in Barracks Row (we profiled it last November), one in Takoma, one in the West End, and one in Truxton Circle. A dispensary proposed by former talk show host Montel Williams along Columbia Road in Adams Morgan fell out of contention after a nervous landlord backed out of the deal last year. (He did get a cultivation center license, though.)

If all four dispensaries get licenses, they will be able to offer up to two ounce of marijuana a month to qualifying patients. They would also be part of a medical marijuana program that is only slowly coming to life, and is looking to be even smaller than expected—last-minute politicking by the D.C. Council left the D.C. Department of Health with the option of only handing out six cultivation center licenses in a program that originally envisioned 10.

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