I skipped the regular City Council meeting last night, but went to the caucus prior to the meeting to listen to Mr. Herb Washington ask Council for a resolution supporting his application to run a licensed marijuana dispensary in Warren. Mr. Washington is a very polished speaker, and a successful businessman who owns 26 McDonalds restaurants. He is applying for licenses to grow, process, and dispense marijuana products through a separate business entity, Quest Wellness LLC. Each of these three steps in the product distribution chain requires a difference license, and Washington feels confident that he will win at least one, in part because of set asides for minority owned businesses; 15% of dispensary licenses will go to minority or woman owned firms.

He told the room that Ohio is going to approve 60 dispensaries for the state, and that two will be in Ashtabula, Mahoning and Trumbull County. He expects a dispensary to empty about 50 permanent employees. His son Terrell, who was also there last night will run Quest. Terrell has been working in the family’s food business.

Washington said he plans to “give back” up to 5% of his profits to “the community.” He also estimated that once the business is up a running that it would pay an average of about $1.3 million per year in state and local taxes. This would imply that the business would be netting in excess of $20 million per year. Council passed the resolution.

All of the statements of fact in this post are quotes from Mr. Washington; I’ve made no attempt to verify them independently. Also, Washington is semi-famous; you can read about him on his Wikipedia page.