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{"id":69035,"date":"2021-06-22T18:00:27","date_gmt":"2021-06-22T22:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/?p=69035"},"modified":"2021-06-22T16:20:35","modified_gmt":"2021-06-22T20:20:35","slug":"florida-medical-marijuana-providers-set-to-nearly-double","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/2021\/06\/22\/florida-medical-marijuana-providers-set-to-nearly-double\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Medical Marijuana Providers Set to Nearly Double"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following the Florida Supreme Court upholding the state\u2019s seed-to-sale medical marijuana model, the Department of Health is preparing to issue 15 new treatment center licenses.<\/p>\n

Those involved in the industry believe the expansion will increase competition and benefit patients, but some lawmakers doubt whether the new players will actually make a dent on cost and availability.<\/p>\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\nThere are more than 575,000 medical marijuana patients in Florida and the ever growing number has opened the door for 15 new MMTC licenses.<\/p>\nOnce the patient count hits 600,000, a total of 19 licenses will be available.<\/p>\n\u201cThis frankly doubles the size of the industry,\u201d said Jeff Sharkey with the Medical Marijuana Business Association.<\/p>\nSharkey expects those licenses will be granted within 18 months.<\/p>\n\u201cI think it’s going to have a big impact. I mean you’ll see people really becoming competitive in this space,\u201d said Sharkey.<\/p>\nBut of the 22 current license holders, nine have produced zero, or virtually zero, product.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s one of the reasons State Senator Jeff Brandes is skeptical more license holders will make a noticeable impact on patients.<\/p>\n\u201cFlorida is going to be awash in medical marijuana licenses. The problem is, nobody wants to put the capital in to build the facilities and then site the retail facilities and build the processing plants necessary to make this work,\u201d said Brandes.<\/p>\nWith the Supreme Court upholding the state\u2019s medical marijuana law, it would take legislative action to undo the expensive, but lucrative, requirement for MMTCs to control every part of the process from seed-to-sale.<\/p>\nSoon after taking office in 2019, Governor Ron DeSantis expressed disdain for the vertically integrated medical marijuana system put in place by lawmakers, saying they \u2018essentially created a cartel\u2019.<\/p>\nBut legislative efforts to abolish the seed-to-sale model in recent years have failed to gain traction.<\/p>\nState Representative Carlos Guillermo Smith hopes its an issue the Legislature will move to address next year.<\/p>\n\u201cWe need more competition because that will drive down the cost of the product for patients,\u201d said Rep. Smith.<\/p>\nThe Department of Health told us it\u2019s establishing an application process for the 15 licenses currently available, but it has not yet begun accepting applications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following the Florida Supreme Court upholding the state\u2019s seed-to-sale medical marijuana model, the Department of Health is preparing to issue 15 new treatment center licenses. Those involved in the industry believe the expansion will increase competition and benefit patients, but some lawmakers doubt whether the new players will actually make a dent on cost and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69035"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/132"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69035"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69039,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69035\/revisions\/69039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}