The state has selected five nurseries across Florida to grow and distribute a weak form of cannabis, and a nursery in Winter Garden will distribute it for our area. But the licensees could raise eyebrows and the wait could be far from over. For the Southeast Region of the state the victor was Costa Nursery Farms, for the Southwest it was Alpha Foliage of Homestead, for the Central Region the grower will be Knox Nursery of Winter, in the Northwest it will be Hackney Nursery Co. and for the Northeast, Chestnut Hill Tree Farm.
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The law called for the medicine to be available last January, but challenges to the Department of Health’s proposed rules for the program delayed the process.
Those nurseries now have 10 business days to post a $5 million performance bond, according to a press release. But families waiting on treatment may have to keep waiting-the Department directs farms that treatments must be ready 210 days after authorization, potentially pushing the date for getting the drug to September 3, 2016. She has a particular fondness for the medical marijuana industry but also likes writing on energy, consumer goods, and technology. A last-minute amendment inserted onto the low-THC bill in 2014 by the Florida House banned any grower from applying who had not been in business since 1984 and had an inventory of at least 400,000 plants at the time of the application.
The department now has to make rules for nursery inspections; a workshop will be held December 9 at the department’s Tallahassee headquarters. The company also claims its plants have always been grown with environmentally conscious best-management practices, and that the company has 700,000 square feet of high-tech greenhouses. Organic additives will be used and pests will be controlled organically. The system will allow them to track every plant and keep precise inventory that allows patients to pre-order medical cannabis based on their needs.
Once the product is produced, it will be transported 4.6 miles to the processing facility by a refrigerated van that is retrofitted with tracking devices and video surveillance.
She doesn’t know if Charlotte’s web will work or for her but recognizes it as a step toward a constitutional amendment to legalize medical marijuana in Florida. She said she would do anything to ease the complications from epilepsy that her 8-year-old son Preston suffers at their Jacksonville home.
Patients will have to get an approval from special registered doctors before being able to purchase the medical marijuana. Driscoll says her operation is keeping its focus on the finish line. Costa Farms filed a lawsuit a year ago, saying the law doesn’t say anything about a random selection for what is surely to be a lucrative growing business.
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The Department of Health awarded one license in each of five regions. At the same time, alongside other growers, they are optimistic that the Legislature will increase the categories of medical conditions covered by the law. A measure like this could also allow growers to cultivate plants with a higher concentration of THC. “More medical conditions and modifying the THC could expand the accessibility and the affordability”.
