It looks like Florida’s 22 new prospective operators will have to wait until the summer before they might finally get the licenses they have been waiting on for three years.
“At this stage, all parties involved in the administrative litigation have submitted their proposed recommended orders to the Administrative Law Judge,” said Attorney Paula Savcheno, founder of Cannacore Group. “We anticipate that final orders and the long-awaited issuance of licenses will occur in June or July of this year.”
Savchenko, who is representing at least one of the 13 applicants who appealed after they were not selected, noted that she expects the administrative law judge to issue her recommended order in April, which will be followed by the Florida Department of Health issuing their final orders.
Each of the appellants challenged their scores for a variety of reasons, such as claiming that financial material was incorrectly considered or that applicants were improperly denied a so-called “citrus preference,” which gives additional points to applicants who seek to convert a citrus processing facility for use in the medical cannabis market. Two of the chosen applicants received bonuses for the so-called citrus preference.
“No petitioner demonstrated that their application was qualitatively better than those preliminarily selected by the Department,” said the 64-page proposed order, filed Feb. 6 by the winning applicants, as interveners in the case.
The individual appellants all filed their own proposed orders, but most of them were deemed confidential by the court and were not publicly available, while others were heavily redacted.
The state’s Office of Medical Marijuana Use did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Medical stall coincides with failed adult-use ballot initiatives
Florida is the nation’s largest medical-only cannabis market, and has the potential to be a significant adult-use market if it were legalized. A ballot initiative in 2024 pulled 56% of the vote, but Florida law requires at least 60% for ballot measures to pass.
Another attempt was made to get adult use on the ballot for 2026. But that effort was unable to secure enough signatures after Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd invalidated about 71,000 signatures. Of that total, about 42,000 were thrown out because they were from “inactive” voters, while the remaining signatures were tossed because they were gathered by non-residents of the state.
The market launched in 2016 with 24 licenses. State law requires that four new medical cannabis licenses be made available for every 100,000 patients that enroll. There are currently 932,359 registered medical patients in the state, so technically, the state should have 36 additional licenses available.
Since the market’s launch, the state has awarded three additional licenses to so-called Pigford/Black Farmer applicants who were given an opportunity to apply as a result of a lawsuit.
Currently, 25 active vertically integrated licenses can operate multiple shops. Four license holders control over half of the total 745 dispensaries statewide. Trulieve Inc., a major funder of both adult-use legalization efforts, has the most with 165 dispensing locations.
The DOH began accepting applications for 22 new licenses in 2023. Nineteen months later, the tentative winners were announced on Nov. 26, 2024.
Since then, the suing applicants and the nominal winners have had to maintain control of property that will become their cultivation, manufacturing or retail site.
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.
Theory Wellness, which became the nation’s largest cannabis company to convert into an Employee Stock Ownership Program in 2023 and operates in five other states, scored the most points among the applicants.
Wachovia Holdings was also listed among the winners, doing business as Greenlight.
