The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission chose a tentative path Thursday for allotting licenses in the state’s legally-challenged medicinal cannabis industry, but even that path has a fork in it.
Two more dispensaries are allowed under the 2016 constitutional amendment that legalized medical marijuana, and the panel decided to choose the state’s 39th and 40th dispensaries from a reserve list of applicants from two designated zones in the state that board members say are underrepresented by existing dispensaries — Zone 6 in west central Arkansas and Zone 8 in southwest Arkansas.
As the plan is expected to proceed, one license will go to the next-in-line applicant in Zone 6, comprising Scott, Polk, Montgomery, Garland, Perry, Saline, Hot Spring and Scott counties. The other will go to the next-in-line applicant in Zone 8, which includes Howard, Pike, Sevier, Little River, Miller, LaFayette, Hempstead, Nevada, Clark, Columbia, Ouachita, Union, Calhoun and Dallas counties.
However, the commission left open the door to a double-blind lottery system for choosing future dispensary licenses, including in cases where a company loses a license or sees it revoked. More details on the lottery method and the reserve-list process will be hashed out in a special meeting the commissioners called for Sept. 16.
“The Commission will have to implement rule changes in order to restore the previously received dispensary applications to active status,” state spokesman Scott Hardin explained. “This will require legislative review, governor’s office approval and a public comment period.”
He said the state anticipates issuing the remaining two licenses late this year or in early 2022. “Commissioners will be presented draft rule changes for review” at the September meeting, Hardin said.
In a 5-0 vote, commissioners denied a request from 3J Investments to transfer a dispensary from Lamar to Russellville.
“3J, licensed in 2020, is one two licensed dispensaries not yet in operation,” Hardin said. “The other is CROP (formerly Missco Cannabis) in Jonesboro.”
Commissioners in Thursday’s meeting at the Arkansas Department of Finance & Administration building in Little Rock, which was streamed live by Arkansas PBS, said they hoped to get away from the process the commission used in choosing the state’s initial 32 dispensary licensees. That method required the commissioners and its consultants to cull hundreds of applications and make choices based on criteria that many applicants saw as biased or at least chaotic.
Arkansas’ legal cannabis industry got off to a rocky start after voters approved the amendment in November 2016, largely bogging down over licensing issues. The first dispensaries didn’t open until May 2019, held up by legal challenges, and the system for licensing and siting cannabis facilities is the subject of several pending lawsuits.
One delay on the final two dispensary licenses was triggered when the license applications all expired before the commission’s December meeting. Earlier this year, panelists decided to steer the two licenses to Zone 6, which now has three dispensaries, and Zone 8, which has four. The specific businesses to be licensed will be announced later.
Meanwhile Hardin told Arkansas Business that Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s re-declaration of a COVID state of emergency has not affected medical marijuana card expirations in the same way the state’s earlier declaration did.
In 2020, one effect of Hutchinson’s initial pandemic emergency declaration was a moratorium on cannabis card expirations.
“The expiration dates on patient cards remain active,” Hardin said in an email, explaining that the “previous action to keep all cards active (even if expired)” is no longer operative. “That temporary rule change expired along with the initial public health emergency. A new action (rule change) would be required to implement it again. I have not heard any discussion or indication it is being considered.”
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