Remember The Patients (Editorial)

The awarding of licenses to grow and dispense medical marijuana in Arkansas was bound to be controversial, and so it is.

Last week Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen stopped the state Medical Marijuana Commission from making its formal award of five licenses to grow medicinal pot. The judge was responding to a request by one of the failed candidates, one of two that have filed lawsuits challenging the commission’s choice of pot growers. The plaintiffs take issue with the commission’s scoring of all 95 medical cannabis cultivation applications.

The process has generated a flurry of complaints since Feb. 27, when the panel named its top five choices to receive growing licenses. The complaints range from allegations of conflicts of interest to charges that the commission’s scoring process was flawed.

Whatever the outcome of the latest legal maneuvering, contention over these licenses — and, no doubt, the licenses to dispense medical marijuana — will continue. That’s because the stakes are high. The global marijuana market — medicinal and recreational — is projected to reach $31.4 billion by 2021, with the U.S. accounting for 90 percent of that market. Many see a license to grow or dispense marijuana as a license to print money.

Arkansas’ experience is no different from that of other states. The awarding of licenses produces a deluge of lawsuits because there is no perfectly fair way to choose who gets to set up in the pot business. Some states try to choose by merit, as Arkansas seeks to. Some have used lotteries. Some have used a combination.

We don’t know enough to give a recommendation on the best way. We know only this one thing: The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission’s prime consideration should be the sick Arkansans who may benefit from the drug, the reason Arkansas voters legalized it in the first place.