DAYTON, Ky. — In the year since Kentucky legalized medical cannabis, the commonwealth has seen a slow and steady rollout of the statewide program — but Northern Kentucky is still waiting on its first dispensary to open.

Four Northern Kentucky businesses received dispensary operating licenses during a state-run lottery drawing in November 2024, before one of the four original licenses was sold, resulting in the following dispensaries slated to open:

• Yellow Flowers, LLC in Erlanger (Kenton County)
• C3 Kentucky, LLC in Wilder (Campbell County)
• Bluegrass Cannacare, LLC in Florence (Boone County)
• Green Grass Cannabis, LLC in Carrollton (Carroll County)

According to Rachel Roberts, a former state lawmaker and current executive director of the Kentucky Cannabis Industry Alliance, of the four, only one, Bluegrass Cannacare, has been “completely approved” by the Kentucky Office of Medical Cannabis to operate.

“I think the other (dispensaries) are still a couple months out, as they’re building out their facilities and working through their zoning issues,” Roberts said. “Not only do facilities need to be built out, but the plant itself needs to grow. So we’re dealing with that.”

Per WCPO 9 news partner WVXU, the operators of C3 Kentucky, LLC told Wilder’s Planning and Zoning Commission in late November 2025 that they plan to begin construction on a new dispensary location along Country Drive in Wilder in early 2026.

WATCH: Northern Kentucky’s first medical cannabis business has opened. The region’s dispensaries will soon follow. Here’s when.

Kentucky medical cannabis rollout: when will dispensaries open in Northern Kentucky?

Across 11 Kentucky regions, 48 dispensaries were awarded licenses to operate.

Chad Johns, general manager of Bluegrass Cannacare, said the dispensary’s open date has, for the most part, been tethered to when the limited supply of product grows enough to sustain business.

“Right now, I hope and pray that we get enough (product) to get us through,” Johns said. “Is it enough to keep everybody open until more can come online and keep going? That’s the question.”

Roberts said the limited supply could be why other dispensaries in the region haven’t opened yet — to bide their time.

“Do they open as soon as they possibly can, or do they wait until there’s (a) more robust product array for patients?” Roberts said. “And here in Northern Kentucky, that really plays into it, because we’re right across the river from a recreational state.”

Kentucky’s first medical cannabis dispensary, The Post, opened in December in Beaver Dam, Ky. Johns said by its fourth day of operating, it ran out of products to sell to patients. After a restock this month, it is back open.

“As more cultivators come online and as more dispensaries come online, those issues are going to balance out,” he said.

There are currently four cultivators, or growers, operating in the Commonwealth. Roberts said a fifth has received its commencement inspection and “may have plants in today or as early as next week.”

Johns said Bluegrass Cannacare is eyeing a February opening date.

“(It feels) like we won the lottery — the same as when they announced our name on the state drawing a year ago,” he said. “We literally are Kentuckians who put in one application, and we hit out of 5,000. Those odds are astounding.”

While no dispensaries are open yet, Kentucky’s first operational medical cannabis processor, Bison Processing, opened on Thursday.

It will be responsible for taking Kentucky-grown cannabis and transforming it into safe, lab-tested medical products — such as tinctures, edibles and topicals — for patients registered in the Kentucky Medical Cannabis Program.

More than 17,000 Kentuckians have been approved for medical marijuana cards, Gov. Andy Beshear said on Wednesday. Roberts said, given where the rollout’s momentum is headed, anyone in Northern Kentucky interested in applying for a card should do so now.

“The fact that we, in just over a year, have dispensaries open with product variety available for the patients of Kentucky is lightning fast in the grand scheme of how medical cannabis works,” Roberts said. “I think Team Kentucky deserves a really big round of applause for the way they handled this rollout, the way that they did the regulations.”

A Jessamine County resident has tested positive for the measles, marking Kentucky’s first confirmed case of 2026, according to a Jan. 15 release from the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.

The resident was exposed after an infectious out-of-state traveler visited Fayette County between Dec. 31, 2025 and Jan. 2, according to the release. The community exposure prompted an announcement from the Kentucky Department of Public Health that encouraged residents to check their vaccination status, monitor symptoms and avoid high-risk areas.

Kentucky’s last confirmed measles case was in July 2025. The Jessamine County case has prompted public health officials to investigate additional community exposures and contact individuals believed to have been exposed. According to the release, the risk to the broader public remains low.

“People who may have been exposed should monitor themselves for symptoms for 21 days after potential exposure,” Kentucky Department for Public Health Commissioner John Langefeld said. “Symptoms include fever, cough, runny nose, red eyes and rash. If you believe that you have been exposed to measles and you have symptoms, please call your health care provider.”

Both the infected resident and out-of-state traveler are unvaccinated, according to the release. Kentucky’s measles vaccination rate among children is lower than the national average by about 6%, according to data from the 2024-2025 school year. Kentucky health officials argue the best way to protect against measles is through the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

“Measles is a serious and contagious virus that has seen a resurgence in recent years,” Health and Family Services Secretary Steven Stack said. “We continue to urge families to take these risks seriously and to protect themselves and their communities by getting the (MMR) vaccine.”

Receiving two doses of the vaccine is 97% effective against measles, according to the release. While the two-dose vaccine is typically administered to children, people of any age can contact an official about receiving the vaccine.

Information about measles and public exposures can be found on the Kentucky Department for Public Health’s website.

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Another year, another push by state Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, to pass legislation adding limitations to a Kentucky governor’s pardon powers.

McDaniel’s Senate Bill 10, with four cosponsors, passed out of the chamber’s State and Local Government Committee on Jan. 14 with unanimous approval. The four-term senator from Northern Kentucky said he’s “fairly optimistic” this is the year his legislation is approved in the House and Senate and put on the ballot as a proposed constitutional amendment.

“I think that just as people have seen pardons, both at the state and federal level, kind of flow through the process, they really for various reasons ultimately end up at the same place — which is an unchecked pardon power is simply not a good thing,” he said.

This isn’t McDaniel’s first attempt at passing the bill, which he crafted ahead of the 2020 session in the aftermath of former Gov. Matt Bevin’s flurry of controversial pardons in his final weeks in office the previous year. It’s passed in the full Senate in at least five separate legislative sessions but has never advanced in the House.

This year, though, McDaniel is confident his proposal has more support. It’s been designated “priority legislation” by Republican leaders in the Senate and was taken up in committee at its first meeting of the session, where it passed without issue after about five minutes of discussion.

The bill would prevent Kentucky governors from issuing pardons for a time period beginning in the final 60 days before a gubernatorial election and ending on the fifth Tuesday after an election, at which point the governor’s current term would end. Kentucky voters would have to approve the measure at the ballot box.

Bevin, a Republican, made waves in 2019 during the final two months of his term when he issued more than 400 pardons. While many were noncontroversial pardons for low-level drug offenders, some drew strong criticism, including one for a man convicted of homicide in 2017 whose family later hosted a political fundraiser for the governor and another for a man convicted of raping a 9-year-old child.

McDaniel, who is also a Republican, at the time said the “stunning” pardons exposed “an unbelievable weakness in our system which is the ability of a governor to override the entire justice system in the dark of night with no recourse.” He echoed those comments this week at the Capitol Annex after his bill was approved in the committee.

“This is just a straight-up weakness in the constitution,” he said. “I think I’ll have a lot of miles on my car in the fall trying to drum up support.”

Pardons should not be a partisan issue, he added. A number of pardons issued by former President Joe Biden in the final days of his term have drawn intense scrutiny over the past year as well, and current President Donald Trump drew criticism last year when he pardoned nearly every person convicted of a crime in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

SB 10 will now head to the full Senate and would need to be approved in the House. The legislature is in its second week and will remain in session into April.

“I’m optimistic that the House will see it my way this year and that the people of Kentucky will see it that way in the fall,” McDaniel said.

The proposal has never had an issue in McDaniel’s chamber, but the House has been a different story. The bill has never made it to the floor for a vote.

House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, said McDaniel’s bill has “never quite met the threshold of being able to pass it over here.” But there could be more enthusiasm this year, he added after his chamber gaveled out on Jan. 14.

“He worked really hard in the interim talking to a lot of our members about it. I think he won some support for it,” Osborne said. “We will continue to have that conversation once it comes over here.”

Learn more about filed bills and follow their process at legislature.ky.gov.

Reach Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com.