State to miss its deadline for medical marijuana licenses
Official in charge: Delay due to Irma, legal challenges.
TALLAHASSEE — Health officials won’t be able to meet a legislatively mandated Tuesday deadline to hand out five new medical-marijuana licenses, the head of the state’s Office of Medical Marijuana Use said Friday.
Christian Bax, the marijuana office’s executive director, blamed the delay on Hurricane Irma and a pending challenge to a recently passed law that ordered the Department of Health to expand the number of medical marijuana licenses.
The law, passed during a June special session, was designed to carry out a November constitutional amendment that broadly legalized medical marijuana in Florida. A key part of the law was increasing the number of operators in what could turn into a highly lucrative industry.
The law called for an overall increase of 10 licenses, some of which already have been awarded, by Oct. 3. It also specified that one license go to a black farmer who had been part of settled lawsuits about discrimination by the federal government against black farmers.
A lawsuit filed last month challenges the constitutionality of that part of the law, alleging the statute is so narrowly drawn that only a handful of black farmers could qualify for the license. The lawsuit, filed by Panama City farmer Columbus Smith, contends that the measure is what is known as an unconstitutional “special law.”
In a letter to legislative leaders signed Friday, Bax wrote that his office has “worked diligently to implement” the new law, but that the issuance of five new medical marijuana licenses by Tuesday posed an “extraordinarily challenging deadline.”
In addition, response and recovery efforts related to Hurricane Irma “necessitated the mobilization of all available department assets for nearly two weeks,” Bax wrote.
Bax also blamed Smith’s suit for his office’s inability to meet the deadline.
“The OMMU (Office of Medical Marijuana Use) is aware of its important role in continuing to move this process forward to provide patient access as quickly and safely as possible. However, recent history has emphasized the importance of getting the MMTC (medical marijuana treatment center) licensure process right the first time,” he wrote.
Marijuana industry insiders have long believed that the agency would not meet the deadline, but Bax’s Friday letter informing lawmakers of the delay made it official. As late as last week, a Department of Health spokeswoman said that the deadline remained “the goal.”
The evolution of the medical-marijuana industry in Florida has been fraught with legal and administrative challenges since its inception after a 2014 law legalized low-THC treatments for a limited number of patients.