Florida health regulators have at last issued all 22 vertically integrated medical marijuana treatment center licenses from an April 2023 application round.
A Sept. 11 final order from the Florida Department of Health promises to end a process that dragged on for more than three years and drew repeated legal challenges, according to a blog post by Sally Kent Peebles, a partner at cannabis law firm Vicente.
The final order awards the coveted vertically integrated permits in the $1.9 billion market to the 22 applicants the state originally selected in November 2024.
Seventy-three applicants competed for the licenses.
How many cannabis permits are allowed in Florida?
Florida law requires four new licenses for every 100,000 patients enrolled above the initial threshold to be issued within six months.
The state reported 941,271 active patients in its Sept. 11 update from the Office of Medical Marijuana Use, suggesting the state may be required to issue more than 22 permits.
“OMMU is required by statute to issue four licenses for every 100,000 patients, but they have generally not followed the statute and often waited years before doing so,” Peebles wrote in an email to MJBizDaily.
“The recent 22 was a way of them playing catch-up.”
After the state issued its initial notices of intent to award, unsuccessful applicants challenged the decision. That triggered formal administrative proceedings before the Division of Administrative Hearings.
A three-month evidentiary hearing that ran from last October through January focused on how the department applied its comparative scoring.
The decision came despite a proposal from Administrative Law Judge Mary Li Creasy to rescore the applications, which could have impacted who won the licenses, Peebles wrote.
In May, the judge proposed a rescore, but Florida cannabis regulators declined to adopt it.
What’s next for Florida vertically integrated cannabis license winners?
Winning a license does not mean entry into Florida’s crowded MMJ market.
Within 10 business days of licensure, each MMTC applicant must post a $5 million surety bond, an irrevocable letter of credit or cash with the department, according to the blog post.
Licensees must request cultivation authorization within 180 days, processing within 270 days and dispensing within 365 days, serving as “a reminder of how procedurally dense and unforgiving Florida’s MMTC framework is,” Peebles wrote.
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“A missed deadline, an incomplete variance request or a compliance gap can undo years of work and capital investment in a matter of days.”
Unsuccessful applicants have 30 days from the Final Order to seek review at Florida’s First District Court of Appeal.
According to Peebles, appeals and a request to pause licensing are likely.
“That would have real implications for timing, deal certainty and diligence for anyone transacting around one of these licenses right now,” Peebles wrote.
