on the damage soon. the post below is from september 2022 when hurricane ian hit florida.
Well over 100 marijuana businesses in Florida were shuttered Thursday as state operators assessed employee safety, flooding, structural damages and mass power outages in the wake of Hurricane Ian.
More than half the state’s 485 medical marijuana stores are located in the direct path of excessive rainfall and potential storm surges, according to data from the Florida Office of Medical Marijuana Use, the National Hurricane Center and MJBizDaily research.
Some of the state’s largest medical marijuana retailers are providing updates on closures on their websites and through social media.
- Tallahassee-based multistate operator Trulieve Cannabis, the largest dispensary operator in the state, closed 55 of its 120 stores, according to the company’s website.
- MV, owned by Illinois-based multistate operator Verano Holdings, had closed about 30 of its 59 stores Thursday morning, according to the company’s website. Seven reopened, and two additional stores closed as of press time.
- Liberty Health Sciences, a unit of Miami-based MSO Ayr Wellness, announced Thursday morning on Twitter that it closed 39 of its 51 dispensaries. It has since reopened stores in Dania Beach, Port St. Lucia, Stuart and West Palm Beach.
Sevi Borrelli, vice president of retail in Florida for Ayr Wellness, told MJBIzDaily the current priority is ensuring its 700 employees are accounted for and safe.
“Our regional managers have been checking in with their associates, and we are close to accounting for all Florida employees,” he said.
At least 11 of Liberty Health Sciences’ stores are without power. Its Gainesville cultivation operation didn’t sustain any damage though, according to Borrelli.
“We’d like to give a shout-out to our team on the ground in Florida who did a great job preparing for the storm and ensured we navigated the storm safely,” he said.
“Providing patients with access to their medicine is always a key focus, and our teams are hard at work creating a reopening strategy.”
Verano has been closely monitoring Hurricane Ian to prioritize the health and safety of its workforce across Florida while maintaining patient access wherever safely possible, the company told MJBizDaily.
“As the storm continues on its current path and damage assessments and recovery efforts are ongoing, we encourage patients to visit our Hurricane Ian MV blog post where we are providing real-time hurricane and dispensary updates with the latest available information,” Verano said in a statement sent to MJBizDaily.
Unprecedented damage
In a state with some of the most destructive storms on record, local and national weather experts predict the toll from Hurricane Ian will be unprecedented.
President Biden said during a Federal Emergency Management Agency briefing Thursday that the storm “could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida history.”
By Thursday afternoon, 2.6 million residential and business electric customers were without power – or nearly a quarter of the state’s energy customers, according to PowerOutage.us, which records and aggregates live power outage data across the country.