PAW PAW, Mich. — Grasshopper Farms already planned to apply for a Cultivator license in Kentucky, but then decided the hold off.
"We're going to keep talking, we'll figure out when's the right timing to go ahead and put an application there," Founder and CEO Will Bowden said. "Then we'll roll forward when it's time."
The competition is already fierce with almost 5,000 applications submitted for licenses, including hundreds for cultivator licenses.
According to the Kentucky Medical Cannabis Program, 239 applications were filed for just 10 available cultivator licenses in Tier I (up to 2,500 square feet of indoor grow space), 190 applications filed for just four available licenses in Tier II (10,000 square feet), and 155 for only two available licenses in Tier III (25,000 square feet).
That gives applicants just a 4% chance of landing a license in Tier I, a 2% chance in Tier II, and a very bleak 1% chance in Tier III.
Bowden pointed out there were a lot of applications in this first round and he knows a lottery can lead to lawsuits.
"They did in Missouri," Bowden said. "Kentucky likes to say that it's the fairest, most transparent way of doing it. I think the lottery is really difficult because it's not a transparent process. You're always going to have people who say that wasn't a random pick. You're creating a group of people who are going to say that wasn't fair."
Small businesses in Kentucky reached out to FOCUS with serious concerns that outside interest, such multistate operators (MSOs), were strategically setting up separate LLCs to stack applications for the lottery and therefore improve their chances.
That's not allowed, and the state had said there was no evidence app stacking was happening.
Bowden agreed it's naive to think everybody was playing by the rules during the application process.
"I think it happens in every state, every state is going to have a number of people who try to put in 10 applications hoping to get one."
Bowden believed Kentucky will need to be truly transparent to know for sure.
He said MSOs are always willing to spend money to make money.
"When they go bet on a state, because that's what they're doing, they're hedging their bets to get into that state, they're going to try to be aggressive with that."
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