As I posted previously, the State of Florida missed the deadline to issue more licenses for medical marijuana treatment centers.
Florida has also encountered serious delays in processing requests for medical marijuana i.d. cards due to the fact that Florida’s Department of Health is requiring patients to send in a paper check to get their card. As Christian Bax, head of the state’s Office of Medical Marijuana Use (“OMMU”), explained:
checks are something that have to be physically processed, they have to be sorted, they have to be tracked.
Additionally, the printing of the Florida i.d. cards for patients has also encountered delays. Florida’s Department of Health reports that 50,284 patients are in the Medical Marijuana Patient Registry. On the other hand, the OMMU has only issued 29,778 i.d. cards.
Mr. Bax recently was called to answer questions by a Florida House of Representatives’ sub-committee related to these delays. Mr. Bax pointed to ongoing litigation of the laws that implemented Amendment Two and the payment processing issues as reasons for the slow roll out of medical marijuana for patients.
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