Kentucky Approves State’s First-Ever Medical Marijuana Business And Schedules Licensing Lottery Next Month To Prepare For Legalization

Kentucky officials have approved the state’s first-ever medical marijuana business license for a testing lab—and they’ve also scheduled a lottery to grant the first batch of cultivator and processor licenses for next month—the governor announced on Thursday.

During a press briefing, Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said implementation of the medical cannabis legalization law he signed last year is “coming really soon,” and in order to ensure that patient have access to the “life-changing medication,” his administration has worked with lawmakers to streamline the licensing process.

To that end, the first approved medical marijuana license has now been awarded to KCA Labs, an existing testing facility that works with the hemp industry.

“These facilities are responsible for testing every medical cannabis product before it gets to a Kentucky cardholder,” the governor said. “Our mission is to ensure Kentuckians with serious medical conditions have access to safe and high quality tested medical cannabis products.”

“As the Commonwealth’s first licensed medical cannabis business and laboratory, that’s exactly what KCA is going to help us do. I love that the first license is going to an entity that helps us do this safely,” he said. “The safety compliance facilities like KCA will guarantee that all Kentucky cannabis is held to the highest medical standards.”

Beshear also announced during the press conference that a licensing lottery will be held on October 28 for cannabis cultivators and processors. It will be facilitated by the Kentucky Lottery Corporation and livestreamed, but the governor clarified that there “won’t be any ping-pong balls” to determine which applicants are selected.

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The governor signed a bill earlier this year that moved the medical cannabis licensing timetable ahead six months to allow the market to launch earlier.

“When we launched the program, our mission was to ensure that Kentucky and suffering from cancer, multiple sclerosis, veterans suffering from PTSD and so many others had access to safe and affordable medical cannabis,” he said. “Today, we’re taking another big step.”

As of now, there’s no set date for a licensing lottery for medical marijuana dispensaries. Beshear said that’s “likely” to take place in November, but the administration is holding off on a specific schedule because he’s hoping officials are able to move more quickly than the current timeline estimates.

“They’re making great progress. We’ve had so many dispensary applications that we brought on new people to help get through them. We’ve got to do it right, and we’ve got to do it well, and you only do something the first time once,” he said. “So in an effort to ensure that we have the full confidence of Kentuckians knowing that we promised them a safe medical cannabis operation and also a fair process of who is in it when it starts, we’re going to wait to announce that date.”

The Office of Medical Cannabis looks forward to working with all licensees to ensure Kentuckians with qualifying conditions have safe access to high quality medical cannabis products. 2/2

— Kentucky Office of Medical Cannabis (@MedCanKY) September 26, 2024

Kentucky’s Office of Medical Cannabis (OCM) has received about 5,000 applications for medical marijuana business licenses since opening that up for a two-month window that ended earlier this month.

All told, Kentucky took in nearly $28 million in non-refundable application fees during that two-month period. With about 4,000 applications submitted for dispensary licenses—and just 48 that will be selected statewide under the legalization law Beshear signed last year—that means each applicant has about a 1 percent chance of being awarded the license.

The governor also recently said that once the cannabis program is up and running, he intends to rescind an executive order he issued last October to legally protect patients who possess medical cannabis purchased at out-of-state licensed retailers.

In June, the governor also announced that the state Board of Medical Licensure and Board of Nursing would simultaneously start issuing permits for doctors and nurses to issue medical cannabis recommendations to patients beginning in July.

Beshear separately participated in a historic roundtable discussion at the White House in March alongside Vice President Kamala Harris and pardon recipients who received clemency under President Joe Biden’s pardon proclamations.

After Biden issued his first pardon proclamation in October 2022, Beshear said he was “actively considering” possible marijuana clemency actions the state could take and encouraged people to petition for relief in the interim. In 2021, he also talked about his desire to let Kentucky farmers grow and sell recreational cannabis across state lines.

In July, Beshear filed a federal comment in support of the Biden administration’s marijuana rescheduling proposal, saying the reform will have “substantial and meaningful impacts” on patients, communities, businesses and research.

The governor has separately urged lawmakers to expand the medical marijuana program, announcing in January that two independent advisory groups he appointed unanimously voted to recommend the addition of more than a dozen new conditions to qualify patients for medical cannabis.

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Meanwhile, the state legislature delivered a budget bill to the governor last year that includes a provision restricting funding for the medical cannabis regulatory body overseeing the state program until its advisory board determines there’s a “propensity” of research supporting the therapeutic “efficacy” of cannabis.

This January, Kentucky lawmakers filed marijuana legislation with a notable bill number: HB 420. If passed, it would have legalized and regulated cannabis for adults 21 and older, though it did not advance in the state’s Republican-controlled legislature this session.

A more limited legalization measure, HB 72, was introduced earlier that month by Rep. Nima Kulkarni (D). It would end all penalties for simple possession and use of marijuana by adults 21 and older and also allow adults to grow a small number of cannabis plants at home. Commercial sales, however, would remain prohibited. It too died, however.

Last year, Kulkarni introduced a measure that would have let voters decide whether to legalize use, possession and home cultivation. The lawmaker previously introduced a similar noncommercial legalization proposal for the 2022 legislative session.

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