Business
New York CAURD: License Application Scoring – Part 1
We’ve been writing about eligibility criteria for licensure for the New York Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary (“CAURD”) (here and here). In addition to the Office of Cannabis Management’s (the “OCM”) handy FAQ, it also recently published a scoring criterion to score eligible applicants after they have met the minimum requirements for each type of eligible applicant: 1) the business criteria applicant and 2) the nonprofit criteria applicant.
Here’s the long and short of it: once an applicant has met the minimum requirements, applicants with complete and verified applications are eligible to be scored and selected for a provisional CAURD license.
Within each region and based upon each eligibility criteria, applicants will be ranked by scores as calculated in accordance with the Scoring Criteria outlined below. The top scoring applicants who rank that region as their first preference, up to the number of allocated or available licenses in that region, will be selected for a provisional license in that region. It appears that the only way an applicant can guarantee their preferred region for a provisional CAURD license is to score the highest.
The scoring criteria
Applicants will be scored differently, based upon whether they slot into business criteria or nonprofit criteria. Although the OCM has not put specific number metrics to each of the below factors, they noted that the following factors will be weighted more heavily in the application scoring process.
For business criteria applicants, the most heavily weighted factors for the scoring process include:
- If the marijuana-related conviction was on the justice-involved owner with sole control themselves or a parent, legal guardian, child, spouse, or dependent;
- If the relevant arrest occurred in an area that has been negatively impacted by over policing and mass incarceration, or has historically low median household incomes;
- If the qualifying business has similar characteristics to a cannabis dispensary, such as the sale of retail goods, inventory management, a physical store, and paid employees; and
- The strength of the applicant’s qualifying business experience, as judged by length of time in operation, size of the business, net revenue, and compliance with state and local laws, rules and regulations.
For nonprofit criteria applicants, the most heavily weighted factors for the scoring process include:
- The demonstrated history of working with justice involved individuals, including length of time working with this population, having justice involved individuals on the Board, the proportion of program expenses that serve this population, and the location of the social enterprise;
- If the qualifying nonprofit has demonstrated good governance principles, as shown by audited financials and the ratio of overhead and programming costs;
- If the social enterprise has similar characteristics to a retail cannabis dispensary, such as the sale of retail goods, inventory management, a physical store, and paid employees; and
- The strength of the applicant’s social enterprise experience, as judged by the length of time in operation and size of the business.
Importantly the nonprofit criteria applicants will be scored and selected separately from other applicants, ensuring that all applicants are given fair chance at selection.
Stay tuned for Part 2, where we discuss the selection process for qualified CAURD license applicants.
Source: https://harrisbricken.com/cannalawblog/new-yorks-caurd-application-scoring-criteria/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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