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LEE’S SUMMIT, Mo. — It didn’t take long for the Kansas City area’s first medical marijuana dispensary to sell out. The Kansas City Star reports that Fresh Green dispensary in Lee’s Summit opened Monday and was sold out by the end of the day Tuesday.

All told, the shop served about 500 customers. Bianca Sullivan, who owns the dispensary with her husband, says most people had to wait about 90 minutes to two hours.

Sullivan hopes the dispensary gets another delivery with 5-10 days from its St. Louis-area grower. Other Kansas City-area dispensaries appear to be weeks away from opening.

FOX4 reported from Fresh Green when it opened on Monday and saw a line stretch far from its doors. Some patients told John Pepitone that they had long been waiting for dispensaries to open after purchasing medical marijuana cards a year ago.

The coronavirus pandemic slowed Missouri’s approval process for operators and cultivators, leaving the dispensaries playing the waiting game, with the first shops opening in the St. Louis area before Fresh Green.

“We did our best to be the first to open in Missouri, but we missed it by a couple days,” owner Rob Sullivan said. “But this greater Kansas City area is what we were really hopeful that we could be the first to open it. I think it’s important to get the medicine to patients as quickly as possible. As soon as it’s available.”

In addition to the first dispensary, the Kansas City metro is also home to one of the first testing labs, Green Precision Analytics.

The lab received its first big shipment of medical marijuana for testing Tuesday from a Carrolton, Mo. cultivator. .5 percent of all product has to be shipped for testing before any of that crop can be sold. 

“We’re kind of the checks and balances between the cultivators and manufacturers to the medicine that goes to consumers and dispensaries,” medical laboratory scientist Josh Kollmeyer said.

As the rollout of medical marijuana continues, the Missouri Department of Health and Human Services expects most of the state’s 192 approved dispensaries to be open by the end of the year.