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membership@theflhc.org
www.theflhc.org
833.4FL.HEMP
The BiPolarity of Cannabis 833.435.4367

in Florida Hemp

and Medical Marijuana

For those of you new to awarded but most recently
Florida or new to cannabis, contesting the vertical
your underlying belief requirement the industry
would probably be that was created under. Flori -
when you are discussing a grown v State of Florida is
new crop, federally legal if having more arguments
grown a specific way with a heard this fall. Adam
specific group of genetics Elend, CEO of Florigrown,
and a federally illegal crop, shared with me, “A hori-
with mandatory verticality, zontal system serves the
that those were two differ- patient better because it is
ent naturally grown plants. more functional and pro-
And, you would be motes diversity. Horizontal
wrong. regulations already exist in
BY JEFF GREENE the marijuana law with
First let’s talk about cultivation authorization,
regulations: processing authorization and dispensing
Hemp – Federally legal, per the 2014 authorization. All they have to do is open
and eventually 2018 Farm Bills. Still only it up and allow wholesale transactions.
legal as long as its not food per the Food The legislature could also raise much
and Drug Administration (FDA), and if needed revenue through excise taxes that
you are on social media there is very little don’t reach the consumer. Most impor-
difference (check out last month’s article tantly, a horizontal system is much safer.
on shadow banning). To add to the confu- The current system is basically lawless
sion, in Florida, hemp is a food per state except for limiting the licenses. The hemp
law. Seeds are scarce due to regulations, regulations are not perfect, but they cap-
mainly because of the instability of the ture a lot of benefits of a free market sys-
genetics. Many folks are saying there are tem. It’s the way businesses have been reg-
no hemp genetics, it’s just marijuana har- ulated in this state for more than 80 years.
vested two weeks early. While that may be Our Florida liquor laws call vertical inte-
the case, genetics companies are pouncing gration “tied-house evil” because the leg-
on the opportunity to fill the void of high islature knew way back then that the sys-
CBD genetics that are THC compliant. tem was inherently poor, inefficient, and
In Florida, horizontal but regulated ripe for corruption.”
markets abound. You can grow with a There are over 2,000 doctors able to
license, process and manufacture with a prescribe medical marijuana with virtual-
license, and wholesale or retail with a ly no education or training. Medical
license. The fees for the licenses are rea- schools did not teach cannabis and con-
sonable: zero for farmers and $650/year tinued education is limited.
for everyone else. Also, consumers do not All that being said, marijuana is a
need a license to consume. schedule 1 drug which means, per the fed-
Within six months of Florida starting eral government, it has no medicinal
the hemp program, over 6,000 retail loca- value. Patients must be issued a recom-
tions indicated they want to sell hemp mendation by one of these registered doc-
products, over 240 manufacturers said tors and then proceed to a location that
they want to make products and over 450 has one brand of product. Each licensee,
farmers said they want to grow the plant. known as a Medical Marijuana Treatment Cannabis News Florida
The state has adopted rules for each, Center (MMTC), can only carry the prod-
passed a bill to fix some language and ucts that they have grown, processed and Physician Promotion Package
established testing requirements. packaged.
Medical Marijuana – Federally illegal, Over and above that, the testing
state legal. Vertical requirement means the requirements have only recently been
barrier to entry was going to be high to adopted for the medical marijuana indus- NEWSPAPER: Three Business Card (4-7/8” x 2”) black and white adsΎ (must be in consecutive
begin with, coupled with nursery restric- try in Florida. What took 6 months on the
tions initially that ballooned the valuation hemp side took 3 years on the medical months).
of the licenses up into the $60-70M before marijuana side.
dropping recently. Hampered by lawsuits, This story is continued on our website at ARTICLE: Physician will contribute an article of 350 wordsΎ. This article will appear in one of the three
initially contesting the way licenses were www.cannabisnewsflorida.com newspapers containing the Business Card ad and in one of the e-newsletters during the three-month
period.

E-MAIL BLAST: Cannabis News Florida will send out one e-mail blast promoting the Physician to the
other physicians in two zip code areas to be determined by the Physician.

The cost of this program is $500.
*Cannabis News Florida can ƉƌŽĚƵĐĞ the ad ĂŶĚ ĂƌƚŝĐůĞ for the Physician for an additional cŚĂƌŐĞ͘

Contact Charles Felix at 954-605-4785
or charles@cannabisnewsflorida.com for more information.

Cannabis News Florida cannabisnewsflorida.com August 2020 37