The Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission delayed issuing more licenses to companies to grow and process medical marijuana on Thursday after the Legislative Black Caucus raised concerns about the process.
Commission Chairman Brian Lopez said members and staff needed more time to review applications for the four growing licenses and 10 processing licenses that were supposed to be awarded Thursday. They will work on “verifying the accuracy of the information in those applications,” Lopez said.
The additional licenses were mandated by a 2018 state law in hopes of bringing more racial and gender diversity to the fledgling medical cannabis industry.
Del. Darryl Barnes, chairman of the caucus, suggested some well-qualified applications from Maryland-based minority firms were rejected. He questioned whether some of the applicants that were poised to receive new licenses were from outside the state or had used minorities merely as the face of a company. He did not offer any evidence Thursday that that was the case.
“We wanted to stop this process” in order to investigate further, said Barnes, a Prince George’s County Democrat. “We want to ensure the process was done fairly.”
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Pamela Wood over at the Baltimore Sun