Denied medical operator applicants in Florida are pushing back as the state continues to drag out the official awarding of 22 long-awaited cannabis business licenses.
Winning a license can be particularly lucrative in Florida, because they are vertically integrated licenses with no cap on the number of dispensaries that one company can operate. This is how Trulieve, which largely financed the failed adult-use campaign, is able to operate 160 dispensaries throughout the state.
The applicants have had to maintain a location for their proposed business since April 2023, meaning continuing to pay rent or a mortgage if the property is not owned outright. This financial burden is likely to continue until the state can settle legal appeals from about 50 failed applicants, according to attorney Paula Savchenko of the Cannacore Group, a Florida-based consulting and legal firm that specializes in cannabis licensing.
“The groups that applied in April of 2023 have to maintain everything that they represented in the application, so they have had to spend money making sure that they can continue to have all of those assets secured. And obviously, the department took over a year to issue the results, and so that does end up being very costly,” she said.
Big names in cannabis tentatively approved
The Florida Department of Health (DOH) announced the tentative winners of 22 medical operator licenses on Nov. 26, with a list of applicants that were sent a letter of intent-to-approve.
The announcement came about 19 months after the state began accepting applications for those licenses. Among those who made the cut were some nationally recognizable names, such as Stiiizy, Belushi’s Farm, which includes actor Jim Belushi as a stakeholder, and Theory Wellness, which already operates in six other states.
Wachovia Holdings was also listed among the winners, doing business as Greenlight. Wachovia Holdings lists Shelby Story as its agent.
At least 8 rejected applicants appeal
The DOH also sent 52 letters of intent-to-deny to other applicants, some of which seek legal recourse against the state agency.
“We are working with eight groups to appeal the denial of their licenses,” said Savchenko. “We filed petitions with the Department of Health a couple weeks ago appealing the denial of those licenses, requesting for the Department of Health to refer those petitions over to administrative court.”
If the DOH denies the request for a transfer to administrative court, and then rules against the appeal, they can then directly appeal to the administrative court.
The DOH failed to respond to email and telephone requests for comment on any appeals or the ongoing licensing process.
“Those groups that did receive the approval notices are not going to actually be able to move forward with operating them until the department issues notice of licensure, and that will not happen until either the litigation is over or we have a legislative fix,” said Savchenko. “The groups that received licenses and the groups that did not receive licenses are gonna be pushing for legislative fixes, so you’ll see more develop in the next couple of months here.”
Florida currently has 24 licensed vertically integrated medical cannabis companies, with at least one more on the way as part of a program to provide black farmers with access to the market.
State law requires that four new medical cannabis licenses be made available, in addition to the original 24, for every 100,000 patients that enroll. Florida had 894,668 registered patients by the end of 2024, according to the Office of Medical Marijuana Use’s Dec. 27 weekly update. This means that technically, the state should have 32 additional licenses available.
The DOH published an emergency rule on Feb. 3, 2023, creating an application window in April of that year, during which applicants would compete for 22 additional operator licenses.
The state has six months to issue those licenses every time the patient count hits another 100,000 threshold, but Florida’s medical cannabis law does not set any consequences for missing that deadline.
