Wait, Somethings Missing: Diversity and Inclusion in Florida’s Marijuana Licensing Program

Five years ago Florida Legislators entered the State into the legal pot industry. The initial laws were limiting in regards to who could gain access to the plant for medicinal use. Patients who met one of several qualifying conditions could receive a recommendation to use medical marijuana.

The recommendation allowed patients to purchase medical marijuana products from a short list of approved companies licensed to cultivate, process and dispense the plant here in the State of Florida. Five of these coveted licenses were awarded in a competitive application process, the first of which opened their doors in the summer of 2016 in Tallahassee, FL.

That same year Florida voters got to weigh in on Amendment 2, a constitutional provision which sought to expand the State’s medical marijuana program by adding more qualifying conditions which patients could receive a recommendation for. It also sought to increase the number of licensed Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers (MMTC) in the State.

The Florida Department of Health has since issued an additional 9 licenses adding to the initial 5, and the Governor recently approved 8 more in a settlement agreement. This will bring the number of licensed MMTCs to 22, yet not a single license has been issued to a black farmer.

DOH officials point to past and pending litigation as the reason for the delay in issuing the MMTC license set aside for a member of the class action lawsuit Pigford v. Glicman as expressed in the 2017 legislation. As a result, any black farmer who is interested in obtaining a license to participate in Florida’s medical marijuana program will have to continue to wait. Or, pray for a ‘Hail Mary’ from Governor DeSantis who has already begun to address issues in the system left by the previous administration.

Meanwhile, the market in Florida is showing no signs of slowing and the current license holders are wasting no time capturing significant portions of the patient population which is conservatively projected to be somewhere around 500,000. By last weeks count, May 10th, 2019 the total patient count has already surpassed 250,000.

This, unfortunately, means that once Florida does eventually award a black-owned organization a license they will have an uphill battle to acquire market share. For many black farmers, this is just par for the course, not unusual in the least bit. It is in line with the systemic discrimination, disguised as administrative red tape, which has plagued family farms owned by blacks for decades.

Unlike many of his fellow black farmers however, John Allen of Florida Tree Growers (FTG) has taken steps to break into Florida’s market despite the many roadblocks he continues to face. Doing so even as others have concluded that there is no room for them to compete in Florida's restricted market. According to Allen, the majority owner of FTG, graduate of FAMU in Tallahassee and a member of the National Black Farmers Association, “the state continues to face issues with the Pigford set aside, and we offer the State a way forward that increases diversity for the State while also avoiding further litigation in the courts.”

Under the current Florida statutes, FTG, would not qualify for the Pigford set aside which has been challenged more than once in court. In May of 2019, a Florida judge ruled that the set aside language, along with other language found in the statute, is unconstitutional. This was quickly appealed by the State and remains unresolved. "Although we are a certified Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) with the state and I own 51% of the company, I don’t qualify as a black farmer per the statue” he says in a laughing tone. When put that way it’s hard to argue that he doesn’t have a fair point. In fact, identifying members of the Pigford class action lawsuit, that are still operating viable farms in Florida, has proven to be task in and of itself. Like many black farmers across the country, they have had to sell their land to make ends meet.

Florida is home to some of the toughest canna-worriers in the country including the group Minorities 4 Medical Marijuana (M4MM) headquartered in Central Florida. Despite great work by advocates in the state, Roz McCarthty, the founder of M4MM suggests “that it will take a while to get Florida on the right track, it began it's program with some of the most restrictive requirements in the country, but the situation in the State is ever evolving so we remain hopeful.” The group led the charge to pass diversity and inclusion language in the 2017 legislation to implement Amendment 2. When ask what it will take to get the program on the right track, she responded “given the lack of oversight and enforcement of the State’s diversity requirement, it will take for the current 14 {soon to be 22} license holders to become champions for diversity and good stewards over Florida’s industry, without their buy-in we can expect very little for diversity in the state. They are the employers here in Florida, they must lead the way.”

So what exactly is the state of diversity in Florida’s medical marijuana industry? The answer is short and simple, it is statistically insignificant. Knox Nursery, now under the brand Fluent, is the only Hispanic-owned license in the State and Trulieve is the only woman-owned license. The lack of diversity licenses, in one of the most diverse states in the union, should outrage Floridians. Ownership, or social equity, is an important part of repairing the damaged caused by systemic discrimination faced by black farmers and the destruction faced by communities due to a failed social-political war. More importantly however, diverse ownership is integral to building a sustainable industry built on inclusion. So far, the State of Florida is performing poorly, however we can do better, and we must.