When the state agency overseeing Georgia’s medical cannabis program issued the first dispensary licenses late last month, it gave the two licensees four months to get them up and running.

Trulieve Georgia and Botanical Sciences LLC won’t need nearly that long. Trulieve opened dispensaries in Marietta and Macon the very next day after being awarded their licenses, while Botanical Sciences plans to open two more late next month or in early July.

“These licensees made a sprint,” said Andrew Turnage, executive director of the Georgia Access to Medical Cannabis Commission. “It’s an amazing testament.”

The speed with which the two companies are opening dispensaries is in sharp contrast to the frustratingly slow pace the medical cannabis program took to reach this point.

The General Assembly first legalized possession of low-THC cannabis oil to treat a wide range of diseases back in 2015 but failed to provide patients a legal way to obtain the drug. Adult patients and parents of ailing children have been forced for years to travel out of state to get cannabis oil or buy it illegally in Georgia.

It wasn’t until 2019 that the legislature passed a bill setting up a licensing process for companies to grow marijuana indoors under close supervision, convert the leafy crop to cannabis oil, and sell the product to patients with a doctor’s prescription who signed up for a registry run by the Georgia Department of Public Health.