LITTLE ROCK, Ark.– We learned medical marijuana could hit the shelves by next summer after a new timeline was set Friday to score applications to grow and to sell medical cannabis in the natural state.
The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission announced a timeline for license applications to be scored on Friday.
In about 3 months 5 medical marijuana cultivation licenses plan to be awarded by the Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC).
Then in about another 3 months, the commission plans to announce who they intend to award the 32 medical marijuana dispensary licenses to in the natural state.
At the meeting late Friday afternoon we learned on December 15, 2017, the commissioners will receive and start to score the 95 applications to cultivate medical marijuana.
The commission set the date of February 20, 2018, as the deadline for each commissioner to score each of the 95 applications.
One week after that on February 27, 2018, the commission set a meeting for 3:30 p.m. to discuss and to find out who got the best scores and what top 5 scores will get the medical marijuana cultivation licenses the ABC will award.
After that meeting, the process of scoring the dispensary applications will begin. In the meeting, we learned that process is expected to take about another 3 months.
We learned from ABC spokesperson Scott Hardin medical marijuana could be on the shelves by the middle of 2018.
