City of Ardmore: Number of medical marijuana businesses tripled in 2019

Medical marijuana businesses are wrapping up their first full of year of legal operations in Oklahoma.

The number of businesses in Ardmore alone has more than tripled since this time last year.

The Highest Choice dispensary in Ardmore opened its doors at the end of November.

Co-owner Eric Gonzalez said it has been a dream for several years to open a dispensary.

"A lot of family members have been dealing with issues of cancer, arthritis so I just really believe in the plant and what it can do for people and just thought it was about time to do it myself," Gonzalez said.

He said his store has seen about 700 customers so far.

Customers buy between one and three and a half grams at $10 a gram each time.

"The first couple weeks were a little slow, these last two weeks have been a big, big time change," Gonzalez said.

Gonazlez said his store will have its grand opening Sat. Jan 4.

At the end of 2018, the City of Ardmore had six dispensaries and one grow facility.

A year later, the city now has nearly triple the dispensaries, four more grow sites and one manufacturing facility.

Plus, several more dispensaries could be coming to the city in 2020.

Community Development director Jessica Scott said there are still five more businesses under construction.

"So the trend right now is we're still kind of going up," Scott said. "I believe, eventually, we'll hit some kind of plateau and maybe go down a little but it just seems right now we're still on that upward climb."

Gonzalez is only a month into his business but says he is not too concerned about the 16 other dispensaries in the city.

"You can choose where you want to go, who you want to see," Gonzalez said. "People tend to click better with someone with their personality. So if there's nobody at that one dispensary, there might be one at another."