Ohio may award extra medical marijuana cultivation license

The Ohio Department of Commerce is weighing the addition of a 25th medical marijuana cultivation business permit to the 24 it’s already handed out.

According to WOSU Public Media, the department admitted in a letter to state Auditor Dave Yost that errors in the MMJ grow application scoring system led to the exclusion of one applicant – PharmaCann Ohio – from the process.

Ohio’s MMJ law limited the department to awarding 24 cultivation licenses, all of which were awarded in November.

Now, however, the agency is “researching how to proceed with 25 licenses, including PharmaCann,” WOSU reported.

Multiple problems with the licensing process have cropped up over the past several months, and Yost has emerged as one of the department’s more prominent critics.

At least two companies that didn’t win MMJ licenses have said they plan to sue the state over licensing flaws, meaning there could be potential delays for Ohio’s MMJ rollout.

Yost has even called on state regulators to redo the entire licensing process, despite some license winners having already broken ground on multimillion-dollar MMJ ventures, WOSU reported.