Marijuana Business Magazine April 2020

Marijuana Business Magazine | April 2020 34 IndustryDevelopments | International & State Minnesota The Minnesota Pharmacy Board and the state’s agriculture, health and public safety departments requested that an Office of Cannabis Management be created to streamline the process of governing the medical marijuana and CBD industries as well as a potential adult-use market. The office also would oversee the state’s fast-growing hemp and CBD market and help the state deal with unregulated and mislabeled products. Missouri State regulators approved more than 35,000 patient registrations by early March. Medical cannabis sales won’t begin in Missouri until late summer at the earliest, but 35,532 patients have successfully registered to use MMJ to treat certain qualifying conditions. The number of registered patients far exceeds what researchers had projected this early in the process. The health department awarded 192 dispensary, 60 cultivation and 86 processing licenses. Many of the licenses went to large, out-of-state multistate operators, and at least 845 appeals have been filed by companies that did not receive permits. Montana The state’s medical cannabis program—already one of the largest in the nation on a per-capita basis—posted year-over-year, double-digit patient count growth, rising to nearly 39,000 as of January. The percentage of Montana’s population registered now stands at 3.6%, the third-highest in the nation. Further change could come at the end of 2020, as two competing ballot initiatives to legalize adult-use cannabis are pending review by Montana’s secretary of state’s office. If the measures are approved, organizers will have until mid-June to collect signatures to qualify for the 2020 ballot. Nevada The state issued a health advisory for 20 different contaminated cannabis products that were sold at 30 retail marijuana stores in Nevada. The retailers sold marijuana flower and pre-rolls that failed an independent laboratory’s microbial testing for mold, yeast and bacteria. The marijuana, grown by six different cultivators, initially passed testing by Las Vegas-based lab Cannex. The lab was shut down in December by the Nevada Department of Taxation after the facility was found with two strains of marijuana containing three times the allowable limit of yeast and mold.