A long awaited batch of new medical marijuana licenses in the state of Florida will be first given to one Black farmer with ties to doing businesses in the state.
The application process will start soon, senior aides to Gov. Ron DeSantis said.
The aides told The News Service of Florida that the Department of Health will begin the rulemaking process for Black farmer applicants within “weeks to months” and set the stage for another set of licenses that would be almost double the number of medical marijuana operators in the state.
“It would be awesome if we could get that application, get that license. We are definitely overdue as it relates to that,” Ocala nursery operator Howard Gunn, who is black, said in a phone interview to the Miami Herald.
State health officials are set to start the application process following a Florida Supreme Court ruling last month that upheld a 2017 law carrying out a 2016 constitutional amendment that broadly legalized medical marijuana.
The court upheld a requirement in the law that medical marijuana operators handle all aspects of the business, including cultivation, processing and distributing — as opposed to companies being able to focus on individual aspects.
Part of the 2017 law also requires health officials to grant a license to “one applicant that is a recognized class member” in decades-old litigation, known as the “Pigford” cases. The cases had addressed racial discrimination against Black farmers by federal officials.
State officials first will focus on granting a single license to a Black farmer who meets certain provisions, including being a Pigford litigant.
