Cannabis Advocates Upset With Maryland’s Slow Pace

Maryland’s state medicinal cannabis commission conveyed a hit to pot advocates and would-be business people a week ago by suddenly limiting the quantity of organizations that can make pot into pills, oils and other medicines.

The commission likewise gave clashing data about when the first anticipated developing licenses would be issued, with Executive Director Patrick Jameson first saying it would be late summer or early fall, then expressing that licenses would come “weeks” after the assessments of the applications are finished toward the beginning of July. At the commission’s first open meeting in months, cannabis backers and business visionaries grumbled about the moderate pace and the mystery of the procedure.

“We have been waiting patiently for the commission to do its work, but every day is a challenge when you’re watching your child seize, fall behind in school and lose ground,” Jennifer Porcari, a parent with a kid that suffers from epilepsy, said. “We ask you to remember that the work of this commission is to help Marylanders and children like our daughter.”

An investigation by the support group, Marijuana Policy Project, observed Maryland as among the slowest states to get its affirmed cannabis program up and running. The commission should begin giving licenses to develop cannabis for medicinal use in January. Be that as it may, the commission got applications from twice the number of organizations it expected, and the timetable has changed a few times. Official Director Hannah Byron suddenly declared her abdication in December and wasn’t supplanted until this month.

The commission, which declined to remark on its pace, has stretched out its agreement with the Regional Economics Studies Institute at Towson University, which is dealing with a board of two dozen evaluators that is checking on and scoring the applications, by four months. Records demonstrate that the expense of the agreement has quadrupled to more than $2 million.