Cannabis panel rethinks expert

Hiring consultant to grade dispensaries enters debate

The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission — hoping to avoid further delays and legal challenges — is poised to hire an outside consultant to determine which of 32 companies will be the first to sell cannabis legally in the Natural State.

The commission voted unanimously Thursday to ask the state Legislature to approve a rule change that would allow the panel to outsource dispensary application scoring.

The five commissioners planned initially to grade the 203 dispensary proposals themselves, using the same merit-scoring system they used to evaluate 83 applications for marijuana-growing permits earlier this year. That process, however, was delayed and marred by a series of lawsuits and allegations

from unsuccessful applicants.

Thursday’s debate centered around whether a consulting company would be able to grade the applications more quickly than the commissioners. A staff attorney also said that hiring a consultant would likely shield the process from legal challenges.

“It’s a tremendous amount of work and we’ve been put so far behind because of all the things that have gone on,” said commissioner, Dr. Carlos Roman. “From a time standpoint, it sounds like [hiring a consultant] is the quickest way there.”

The commission also voted to make two additional rulechange requests. The first would allow the commission to maintain unsuccessful applications for growing and selling licenses for two years, so that the next highest-scoring company could be selected for a permit if a top-company’s license is revoked. The second rule creates a double-blind lottery to determine the winner of license in case of a tie.

Thursday’s meeting was the panel’s first since cultivation licenses were officially awarded earlier this week to five groups. The meeting at times veered off topic and included references by commissioners to Russian President Vladimir Putin and erectile-dysfunction drugs. Patients and hopeful applicants at times could be heard in the audience murmuring in disapproval of the commission.

Arkansans approved a constitutional amendment in 2016 voted to legalize medical marijuana, which must be grown in Arkansas. Once up and running, the state’s program will feature 32 dispensaries and five growing facilities. If demand increases, the commission can license up to eight cultivators and 40 dispensaries.

Patient groups and some hopeful cannabis growers have blamed the commission for many of the delays to the drug’s implementation, and Thursday’s meeting provided several commissioners’ first defenses of the process.

“I don’t think there was a problem with scoring anyway; I’m not going to claim that,” the chairwoman, Dr. Ronda Henry-Tillman, said. “You can not be less biased than this commission has been.”

Roman called the lawsuits “fantastical.”

In a lawsuit from one unsuccessful applicant, two commissioners were accused of bias because of their relationships with the owners of two of the companies awarded growing permits.

The suit also claimed that regulators failed to verify that each proposed cultivation facility would be more than 3,000 feet from the nearest church, school or daycare, as required by law.

A lower court judge initially sided with the unsuccessful applicant in the lawsuit, saying the commission’s scoring process was unconstitutional. But the Arkansas Supreme Court overturned the ruling and dismissed the suit on procedural grounds.

Media outlets have also found a variety of inconsistencies in the scoring process. For example, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette found that commissioners used different scoring rubrics to grade applications, and those differences impacted how each commissioner assigned scores.

If lawmakers approve the rule change, the commission could begin soliciting bids from consultants after its July 25 meeting. Officials from the state Office of Procurement estimate that it will take between 30-60 day to gather bids.

Then, the consultant will have a period of time, to be determined by commissioners, to grade the 203 dispensary applications.

Alcoholic Beverage Control Division staff members, who provide administrative support to the commission, also informed the panel that about a dozen protest letters from unsuccessful applicants had been forward to the division’s enforcement arm to be investigated. The division will investigate the complaints to determine if any growing licenses should be revoked.

As of Thursday, 5,546 patients had been approved by the Arkansas Department of Health for marijuana registry ID cards. Patient advocates expect that number to shoot up closer to the opening of the first cannabis dispensary.

Industry experts expect the drug to be available in Arkansas sometime in 2019.