Arkansas's medical marijuana legal battle continues

After Arkansas regulators awarded cultivation licenses for the state's medical marijuana program a judge had the decision tossed out and ruled that the decision was made unfairly due to conflict of interests. While 1 of the businesses chosen to receive a license has spoken out in favor of the decision, many more businesses who were not chosen are supporting the judge's ruling and hope to see the applicants scored again. Since the judge's ruling the license awarding process has stopped which includes being able to award the next licenses to dispensaries. It will take roughly 2-3 months for both sides of the decisIon to become briefed on the coming process and then the case will take 6-9 months before the Supreme Court can issue a final ruling. 

Attorney Alex Gray explained both sides will soon take part in a briefing process that will last 75 to 90 days. At that point, the case joins a stack of cases before the state Supreme Court. It’s estimated the Supreme Court will issue an opinion six to nine months from now.

The Medical Marijuana Commission was supposed to be scoring dispensary applications right now, but that’s also at a halt.