TALLAHASSEE - Florida Department of Health officials took two major actions in the medical-marijuana sphere Friday, issuing a highly sought-after license to a Miami nursery that successfully challenged the state and laying out the process for four more licenses as the cannabis industry continues to blossom.
In a blistering opinion last month, Administrative Law Judge John Van Laningham recommended that health officials grant a medical marijuana license to Nature’s Way Nursery of Miami, Inc. The June 19 recommended order scalded the state Office of Medical Marijuana Use for using a flawed system to decide which applicants were granted the coveted licenses.
While Van Laningham’s order was just a recommendation, health officials on Friday issued the license to Nature’s Way and reduced the number of available slots as hundreds of applicants are expected to compete to join a highly restricted market in one of the country’s most populous states.
At the same time, health officials laid out the framework for a new process to handle what they expect to be up to 400 applications for four licenses that recently became available because the number of eligible patients in a statewide database has exceeded 100,000.
