Pennsylvania’s fledgling medical marijuana program is clearly going through some growing pains.
The state’s Office of Open Records has ruled that Pennsylvania’s Department of Health hasn’t made a “good faith effort” when deciding if the information on applications for medical marijuana permits was improperly redacted.
The incident comes on the heels of a pair of legal challenges against the state’s Office of Medical Marijuana involving the MMJ licensing process.
The health department has until Sept. 18 to provide a timeline for when it will make available a more complete review of the 450-plus cultivation/processing and dispensary applications that amount to roughly 300,000 pages combined, according to PennLive.com.
The health department allowed MMJ business applicants to determine what information of theirs was redacted based on whether they considered it to be proprietary, the news outlet reported.
The Reading Eagle newspaper challenged the heavy redactions – some applications had entire pages blacked out – that removed information about how companies were funded and who was behind permits. The publication also determined there was no rationale behind what was redacted from one application to the next.
Pennsylvania is targeting a mid-2018 launch of its medical marijuana program.
