Medical Marijuana Program of Florida Challenged By 11 Companies

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According to Florida Politics, the limited medical marijuana licenses of Florida is being challenged. There are a total of 13 administrative challenges with regard to the decision of the state to grant licenses for the medical marijuana industry.

There is an administrative challenge filed against the decision in all five regions. On the other hand, Red Nursery filed administrative challenges in two regions.

The challenges have been filed after the Office of Compassionate Care decided and named the five nurseries that will be given the license to legally plant marijuana and sell medicines made out of it. The announcement of the five companies that were given the licenses took place on November 23.

Florida considered some factors in deciding which companies should they award the legal authority to plant and sell medical marijuana. The main factors to qualify include the requirement that the company should have been in business in the state for 30 years or more. Another one is that the company should have grown at least 400,000 plants during the time of its application.

The Orlando Sentinel reported that the Florida Department of Health ran a competition where there were a total of 27 applications from 24 companies. They scored each company based on their criteria and finally named five nurseries, including Knox Nursery of Winter Garden to receive the legal authority for planting and selling medicinal marijuana. Eleven companies challenged this decision.

The limited medical marijuana program has been introduced in the year 2014. In July 2014, Rick Scott signed the program into law. The program is to give legal authority to nurseries to plant marijuana and sell medicines extracted from it to be given to those patients suffering from tremors, chronic seizures, and other neurological conditions.

The decision on which nurseries will receive the licenses has been announced just last month. The program is already late for a year. When the program was first introduced, they were expecting to see medicinal marijuana products last winter or spring. Now, since everything has been delayed, the earliest possible season that these products will be available will be in spring or summer 2016.

According to Biz Journals, among the factors of caused the delay of the program are legal and court proceedings and judge's rejections of the initial stab of the Department of Health regarding the rule that regulates the medical marijuana industry. Now, these appeals regarding the decision to award the licenses to the five named nurseries will take another set of rulings, court proceedings, and judges' decision before finally coming up with a conclusion