Another dose of medical marijuana for the Florida Supreme Court

Florigrown LLC of Tampa is testing a 2017 law that created a special licensing structure for the state’s medical marijuana industry. Joe Redner, one of the Florigown owners and strip club operator, claims the law is incorrectly applying the amendment.

Joe Jacquot, DeSantis General Counsel, stated that the 2017 law allows entitled candidates to apply for the coveted medical marijuana licenses when he was representing Florida’s Department of Health at Wednesday’s hearing.

“This is a constantly growing number of licenses. This is clearly an open class.“ said Jacquot.

But Catherine Giddings, Florigowns lawyer pointed out that the state has  recently licensed 22 marijuana manufacturers so far. Each of them had previously applied for licenses under the 2014 non-euphoric cannabis law that preceded the constitutional amendment.

“This is definitely a closed class because no one can ever get the same privileges as they do,” she said. “This is everything except the free market. He created a monopoly for several businesses. This is why the licensing system is inappropriate and irrational. “

The 2017 law provided the health officials to give the licenses to operators who were already certified under the non-euphoric cannabis law and to manufacturers that were not selected in a previous round of licensing or were involved in litigation with the Ministry of Health.