The New York Department of Health announced Friday the names of five companies chosen to legally grow and sell medical marijuana. Bloomfield Industries, Columbia Care NY, Empire State Health Solutions, Etain and PharmaCann were awarded licenses to manufacture medical cannabis and operate dispensaries at their intended facilities in several countries throughout New York State.

Two of the five companies selected to grow and sell medical marijuana in New York will open dispensaries in Erie County, the state announced Friday.

But none of the companies selected are from Western New York.

The five licensees are: Bloomfield Industries Inc., Columbia Care NY LLC, Empire State Health Solutions, Etain LLC and PharmaCann LLC. The Health Department released only the company names and the counties where they will set up their manufacturing centers and their dispensaries. The closest manufacturing site will be in Monroe County. Bloomfield Industries and PharmaCann will each have a dispensary in Erie County.

A New York medical marijuana bidder whose principal was the subject of a damning audit in Kansas was the target of a political vendetta, a former Kansas governor and ally of the bidder claims.

The Times Union reported Wednesday on the critical 2012 audit concerning the Kansas Bioscience Authority and its former leader, Tom Thornton. Thornton now runs North Shore Ventures, a New York company that's part of a bidding team seen as having a good shot at landing one of five lucrative marijuana licences in New York.

The decision by the New York Department of Health is expected this week.

A medical marijuana dispensary is one step closer to setting up in Brooklyn after a community board Wednesday approved its location as the state gets ready to announce which companies will be given licenses. NY1's Jeanine Ramirez filed the following report.

Located under the Gowanus Expressway in Sunset Park, a vacant building that used to house batting cages may soon grow into a new business: a medical marijuana dispensary. A cannabis company called Mindful Medical leased the site, hoping to be one of just five to get a vendor license from New York State.

Of 43 applicants, only five will receive licenses to grow and dispense medical marijuana in New York state.

The winners were initially expected to be announced in mid-July by the state Department of Health and now are expected to be named July 31.

Maybe the waiting got to be too much.

Nature abhors a vacuum, with no news from the Health Department and little public information about the applicants, no wonder that innuendo filled the void.

Over the past few weeks, various publications across the state have run stories about some of the applicants, portraying the quest for a license as a cutthroat business. There is money to be made -- the Washington Post reported that in 2014, Colorado retailers sold $386 million worth of marijuana.

The New York Department of Health is expected to announce either Thursday or Friday which five companies it has selected to award licenses to grow medical marijuana under the Compassionate Care Act. This announcement, first reported by the Daily Freeman News of Kingston, New York, may come as a welcome, if long-awaited, surprise to the 43 companies that filed their applications for medical marijuana growing licenses nearly eight weeks ago. Many began their application prep several months before the licensing application even appeared online.

We’re expecting to learn by the end of the week, which companies will be given licenses to grow and sell medical marijuana in New York.

The Health Department has reviewed thousands of pages from 43 applications. Only five will be chosen. One of which is Hudson Health Extracts and they gave us an exclusive look inside their sister company in Watertown Connecticut.

New York will have some of the toughest regulations when it comes to medical marijuana. It will only be sold in the form of pills, tinctures, and vaporizers.

To protect the budding industry, Theraplant is located in a highly secure facility. NEWS10ABC had to suit up to protect the plants from pollen or any type of bacteria.

As news stories about the rise of legal marijuana businesses continue apace in the national media, New York State moved closer toward permitted marijuana use for medicinal purposes under the state’s Compassionate Care Act (Article 33, Title 5-A of the New York Public Health Law).

In early June, we learned that 43 groups submitted applications in the hopes of receiving one of the five licenses to be granted by the state Department of Health to grow and sell medical marijuana in New York. Though the five groups that ultimately receive the licenses from the DOH may be perceived as “hitting the jackpot,” they will nonetheless be confronted with a unique set of challenges in light of the current legal framework for businesses in the medical marijuana industry.

New York state health officials plan to announce by the end of this week the companies selected to operate medical marijuana growing operations and dispensaries.

A spokesperson for the state Department of Health said Tuesday that the agency intends to identify the chosen applicants for five available licenses by Friday.

The program is expected to begin next year. Patients with certain diseases — including cancer, AIDS, Lou Gehrig’s disease and epilepsy — will be allowed to get prescriptions to obtain forms of the drug that are edible or vaporized, but not smoked.

Forty-three organizations have submitted applications for a license.

Applicants with Hudson Valley ties are: