RE:RE:Tilray Brands - American Cannabis Update Gov. DeSantis thinks pot companies aren’t paying enough to conduct business in Florida
“I mean, these are very valuable licenses,” the governor told reporters. “I would charge them an arm and a leg. I mean, everybody wants these licenses.”
By Dara Kam and News Service of Florida on Mon, Nov 6, 2023 at 9:59 am
Arguing that a $1.33 million price tag is unjustified, a medical-marijuana operator is challenging a license-renewal fee boost that came after Gov. Ron DeSantis said pot companies aren’t paying enough to conduct business in Florida.
The state Department of Health in December adopted a rule creating a formula that set the license-renewal fee for medical-marijuana operators at $1.33 million every two years — more than 22 times the $60,000 biennial fee operators had been paying since the program started six years ago.
The formula is based on the number of licensed operators and the cost to regulate the medical-marijuana program. But the fee does not take into account tens of millions of dollars collected by the agency from patients and caregivers who pay $75 a year for identification cards to participate in the program.
The revised license-renewal fee is “an exponential increase” from the previous amount, lawyers for Sanctuary Cannabis, whose license is due for renewal in January, argued in a challenge filed last week.
Sanctuary’s petition for an administrative hearing relied heavily on a budget request the health department submitted to the Legislature for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, which will begin in July.
The request showed that the Department of Health collected $14.9 million in application and renewal fees for licenses and nearly $65 million from patients and caregivers during the 2022-2023 fiscal year, which ended in June. Currently, more than 854,000 patients are qualified for the program.