Litigation over the structure of Florida’s medical marijuana industry could reach a finale this year when the state Supreme Court rules on whether a requirement that licensees be “vertically integrated” is constitutional.
The high court is expected to rule on a case involving Tampa-based Florigrown LLC, which is challenging a 2017 law that state officials put in place to implement a statewide voter-approved initiative legalizing medical marijuana in Florida. That law, according to Florigrown attorneys, conflicts with the state constitution by requiring that a single company oversee the medical cannabis product from seed to sale.
“Vertical integration requires one company to grow, process, manufacture and sell all licensed medical cannabis products,” Bruce Barcott, a senior editor at the Leafly website, told the Florida Record in an email. “Few industries operate under that stricture. We don’t require Pfizer to manufacture pharmaceuticals and sell them in Pfizer-only pharmacies.”
Leafly senior editor Bruce Barcott
| Leafly.com
Leafly, an online source of cannabis products and educational reports, recently teamed up with Whitney Economics to identify the scope of marijuana industry jobs in states that have legalized either medical or recreational marijuana. Florida had the third highest number of cannabis jobs in the nation at 31,444 – a number that rose by nearly 15,000 jobs during 2020. The state also has nearly 500,000 medical marijuana patients, according to the report, which was co-authored by Barcott.
“Abolishing Florida’s vertical integration requirement would allow thousands of experienced farmers to grow, would allow product developers to create new forms of relief for patients, would allow retail experts to focus on offering patients the most pleasing, safe and appropriate facilities in which to access their medicine,” Barcott said.
In addition, if the state were to legalize recreational cannabis for all adults, Florida could see the number of its cannabis jobs double, according to the Leafly report. The growth of Florida’s marijuana jobs was a major surprise, the authors stated, since it outstripped cannabis jobs in adult-use states such as Oregon and Washington. In 2020, the state’s cannabis sales were valued at more than $1.2 billion, according to the report.
Currently, Florida has issued nearly two dozen medical marijuana licenses under the “vertical integration” provisions of the 2017 law. But some state lawmakers have already introduced legislation that would repeal those provisions and create more of a free-market system for producing and selling legal cannabis products in the state.