LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Kentucky chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) is trying to ease some concerns about the application process for medical cannabis licenses.
More than 2,600 applications have been filed for medical marijuana businesses in Kentucky. With 48 licenses to give out, a lottery will be used to determine who gets to grow, process and sell the cannabis.
Kentucky NORML said they have heard the allegations about big cannabis companies trying to game the state's lottery system.
Kentucky NORML Deputy Director Lauren Bratcher said there are two laws surrounding medical cannabis licensing in the state: one of them focuses on the creation of a fair and competitive market for medical cannabis while the other focuses on more administrative and regulatory aspects.
Bratcher said some businesses have secured provisional lease agreements for multiple properties, but they do not guarantee a license nor influence the lottery outcome.
And while larger businesses may create multiple LLCs for operational purposes, Bratcher said this doesn't give them an unfair advantage.
“We require in these regulations them to provide us their ownership, their corporate structure, and they have to explicitly disclose whether they have a parent of any kind," Director Sam Flynn said. "Through these mechanisms, we're able to determine whether there is a parent company, and because we define the parent as the applicant, in that case, the parent company can't, in a sense, you know, load the lottery with multiple applications.”
502 Hemp owner Dee Dee Taylor talked with WHAS11 News about the lottery system and how she wasn't feeling good about her chances.
"Multi state cannabis operators, they're now infiltrating Kentucky," Taylor said. "They're filing multiple LLC's and creating new Kentucky companies, and then they're using one address to literally stack the lottery system."
One of the safeguards to prevent application stacking are background checks Bratcher said. The background checks were designed to make it impossible for companies to submit multiple applications.
The application portal for the licenses closed on Aug. 31.
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