A Black farmer with ties to doing business in Florida will be at the head of the line for a long-awaited batch of medical marijuana licenses in an application process that state health officials will launch soon, senior aides to Gov. Ron DeSantis said.
The aides told The News Service of Florida that the Department of Health will kick off the rule-making process for Black farmer applicants within “weeks to months” and set the stage for another set of licenses that would nearly double the number of medical marijuana operators in the state.
“It would be awesome if we could get that application, get that license. We are definitely overdue as it relates to that,” Ocala nursery operator Howard Gunn, who is Black, said in a phone interview.
State health officials are poised to begin the application process following a highly anticipated Florida Supreme Court ruling last month that upheld a 2017 law carrying out a 2016 constitutional amendment that broadly legalized medical marijuana. The court upheld a requirement in the law that medical marijuana operators handle all aspects of the business, including cultivation, processing and distributing — as opposed to companies being able to focus on individual aspects. Tampa-based Florigrown LLC, which challenged the law, had until June 11 to ask for a rehearing but did not.
Part of the 2017 law requires health officials to grant a license to “one applicant that is a recognized class member” in decades-old litigation, known as the “Pigford” cases, which addressed racial discrimination against Black farmers by federal officials.
Florida currently has 22 licensed operators, known as “medical marijuana treatment centers,” or “MMTCs,” that have more than 200 retail sites across the state.
But the number of licensed operators dramatically lags behind part of the 2017 law requiring additional licenses as the number of qualified patients — now nearing 600,000 — increases. Under the law, Department of Health officials are required to add 15 MMTCs to the 22 existing operators. When the number of patients tips the 600,000 mark as expected in the coming months, the number of new licenses will mushroom to 19.
State officials first will focus on granting a single license to a Black farmer who meets certain provisions, including being a Pigford litigant. Many of the Black farmers who made claims in the federal class-action lawsuit have died, and most surviving litigants are now in their 80s and 90s.
Pigford applicants will try to enter an established medical marijuana market where licenses are selling for up to $50 million. An initial round of licenses were granted in 2015 to operators seeking to sell low-THC cannabis. They were later allowed to sell full-strength cannabis after state voters approved the 2016 constitutional amendment.
“How do you fight that type of situation? Where do we go from there?” Gunn, who said he is affiliated with some Florida Pigford claimants, told the News Service. “There’s no way that we’re going to be able to keep up with that. And it is not going to change. They get further and further ahead. Now that we’re playing catch up, we’re just going to have to be more strategic.”
Upcoming rule-making for the Black farmer application likely will serve as a template for the process to award the larger batch of licenses…
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