Medical marijuana regulators seek $13M more from the state

TALLAHASSEE — With Florida’s legal medical marijuana industry poised to mushroom, regulators are asking lawmakers for nearly $13 million to more than double the number of workers in the office that oversees it.

Health officials also want $4 million for a state education and prevention campaign to publicize “accurate information” about medical marijuana, money to buy vehicles to take samples of THC-infused edible products to a testing lab in Jacksonville and additional funding to open three regional offices within the Office of Medical Marijuana Use, according to documents submitted to the Legislature.

The office has 80 positions and is seeking to add another 85 employees as the number of patients, which continues to skyrocket since medical cannabis first went on the market in Florida five years ago, is expected to exceed 900,000 by mid-2023.

The new positions would be transferred from “aged, vacant positions” assigned to county health departments, the proposal said.

About $5.7 million of the office’s $12.9 million request would go toward hiring 85 full-time workers and the remainder would cover contracted services and other expenses.

Part of the outsourced work is intended to help process an expected influx of applications from businesses hoping to enter Florida’s lucrative market. Health officials are expected to begin doling out licenses that will more than double the state’s number of operators, known as medical marijuana treatment centers.

Florida has 22 licensed medical marijuana operators. But a 2017 law set up a schedule for new licenses to come online as the number of patients increases.

The increase in patients and operators “presents a considerable increase in demand” on the office’s staffing resources, the budget proposal said.

With more than 620,000 patients already approved for medical marijuana, the law requires health officials to add 19 medical marijuana treatment centers to the existing operators.

The number of operators should have grown incrementally as the number of patients boomed, but Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration said they were holding off on opening the application process for new licenses until the Florida Supreme Court ruled in a key medical marijuana lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed by Tampa-based Florigrown LLC, challenged a requirement in the 2017 law that medical marijuana operators handle all aspects of the business — cultivation, processing and distribution — instead of allowing companies to focus on individual components of the marijuana trade. The court in May upheld the law, which was designed to carry out a 2016 constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana in Florida for patients with a broad swath of medical conditions. Lawmakers in 2014 had approved limited use of non-euphoric cannabis.

Senior aides to DeSantis said in June that the Department of Health was preparing to launch the license-application process within “weeks to months.”

According to the budget proposal submitted last month, the Office of Medical Marijuana Use anticipates issuing 19 new licenses by July 1 and another eight licenses by July 1, 2023.