Florida's Black farmers have yet to get a medical marijuana license despite state's promise four years ago

When the Florida Legislature passed a law that created the modern Florida medical marijuana industry in 2017, it set steep barriers to entry. It limited the number of licenses the state could award to companies.  And, mandated that by no later than Oct. 3 of that year, a new marijuana license was to be given to a business owner belonging to a “Pigford Class” — one of two groups of Black farmers who had won a judgment from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for that agency’s history of racial discrimination.

Fast forward four years later, Florida has yet to award a cannabis license to a Black farmer.

This past Thursday, state senators called the director of Florida’s Office of Medical Marijuana Use, Christopher Ferguson, before them to find out why?   Ferguson said developing regulations for the Pigford (Black) license is a priority for his office, and the rules would be ready in “the coming weeks.”

Foot dragging by state puts Blacks at a disadvantage
Wether intentional or not, even if awarded a license today, a potential Black-owned cannabis business would start its operations at least five years behind the first Florida dispensaries. How would that business catch up? Much of the urban retail space available for dispensaries has already been plucked up by Florida’s early operators, some of which now number among the largest cannabis companies in the world.

“There’s definitely some people that are not starting at the starting line, but starting in the parking lot and trying to catch up,” said Erik Range, the board chair for the advocacy group Minorities for Medical Marijuana.

Of the 22 medical marijuana treatment centers licensed to sell cannabis in Florida, just one, Cookies Florida, is minority-owned. That business has yet to begin dispensing cannabis to patients.

While Florida’s Black farmers have had to wait for the Pigford rules, other states have more actively helped Black residents affected by unjust marijuana policies. New Jersey, in an attempt to amend for drug enforcement policies that disproportionately targeted Black residents, has built social justice into its legal cannabis program. One quarter of all licenses will go to residents who live in “impact zones” — larger cities with a disproportionately high number of marijuana possession arrests. The state also expunged criminal marijuana possession and distribution records involving smaller amounts of the drug.
 
A much less ambitious effort to expunge some cannabis offenses in Florida passed the Florida Senate during the 2021 Legislative session, but the bill died in the Florida House of Representatives because the speaker opposed it.

Florida did, however, do something that no other state had done by mandating that $10 from the sale of each identification card fee go to FAMU, the state’s only public HBCU to create a public information program to educate minorities about marijuana for medical use and the impact of the unlawful use of marijuana on minority communities.