Frustrated senators grilled Florida’s pot czar Tuesday, demanding explanations for why his office missed a legislatively mandated deadline to issue new medical-marijuana licenses and why ailing patients are stuck waiting for state-issued ID cards.
Christian Bax, executive director of the state Office of Medical Marijuana Use, blamed one of the delays on a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of part of a new law that required health officials to issue 10 new marijuana licenses by Oct. 3.
But Senate Health Policy Chairwoman Dana Young, R-Tampa, rejected Bax’s explanation.
“I’m not buying that just because there’s litigation out there you can’t fulfill your statutory duty to issue these additional licenses,” Young, a lawyer, scolded Bax.
The new law, passed during a special session in June, was intended to carry out a constitutional amendment, approved by voters in November, that broadly legalized medical marijuana in Florida.
The lawsuit cited by Bax deals with a portion of the law that reopened the application process and ordered the Department of Health to grant five licenses by Oct. 3, after it approved five other new licenses in August. One of the licenses in the second batch must go to a grower who had been part of settled lawsuits, known as the “Pigford” cases, about discrimination against black farmers by the federal government.
But weeks after the deadline has passed, Bax has yet to hire a vendor to score what could be hundreds of applications for the highly coveted licenses in potentially one of the nation’s most robust marijuana markets.
Bax has maintained that the lawsuit filed by Columbus Smith, a black farmer from Panama City, has temporarily put the application process on hold.
