More than 10 years ago, Arizonans voted to approve the implementation of the Arizona Medical Marijuana Program. In 2020, the program expanded with the passing of Prop 207, allowing for the adult recreational use of marijuana. There are now many dispensaries and adult-use facilities statewide, where adults above the age of 21 can purchase marijuana [...]
The Superior Court judge ruled this morning that our requirement for Registration Certificate holders (dispensaries) to get an approval to operate within one year in order to renew their certificates is unreasonable. Because of today’s ruling, we’re going to accept renewal requests for all the current dispensaries in the state, whether they’re open or not. The [...]
We got sued again this week regarding our Medical Marijuana Program. This time we’re getting sued because the Plaintiffs think that our 1-year deadline for getting a dispensary up and running is too restrictive. Basically, the Plaintiffs allege that the legal issues that have arisen in response to the White Mountain Health Center, Inc. (a [...]
This month marked the 2nd anniversary of our Arizona Medical Marijuana Program. We began issuing cards to qualifying patients 2 years ago this week, and as of April 16th we had about 38,000 qualified patients in AZ. On the Dispensary side of the house… 16 dispensaries are approved to operate in AZ, and another 13 [...]
Last week a Superior Court judge ordered Maricopa County to process the zoning paperwork that has been submitted by the applicant for the Sun City CHAA. The Maricopa County Attorney asked for a Stay of the decision while he appealed the case to the Court of Appeals. This morning, the Superior Court judge denied that request [...]
Last Thursday I announced in a blog post that our team had just returned from a field inspection for a dispensary applicant in Glendale, that there were no major deficiencies, and that we had awarded the dispensary an “Approval to Operate”. Today the Applicant asked for a short delay in the effective date for their [...]
Team ITS delivered and deployed 2 more new web modules for the Medical Marijuana application this week: the 1) dispensary agent processing module; and 2) a new version of the Verification System which more efficiently facilitates card verification for law enforcement officers and employers in real time. Thanks much to everyone who assisted in the development of these modules. From ITS, [...]
For about four hours this morning, balls were hopping in the bingo machine as we randomly chose one dispensary for each of the 68 competitive districts. All the drawings are online for you to watch - there were 404 applications considered in the 68 drawings. There were also 29 CHAAs where there was only one [...]
The AZ Attorney General issued an Opinion and a media release this afternoon about the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act. The Opinion states, in part, that the voter approved Act is pre-empted by Federal Law – specifically the part that allows the cultivation, selling or distribution of marijuana. It references 2 recent court cases that states [...]
We’ll wrap up our first week of accepting medical marijuana dispensary Registration Certificate applications today. We’ve received about 40 applications so far this week- and our team has been doing an excellent job of reviewing the applications for “Administrative Completeness” this week- so much so that we don’t even have a backlog (yet). Any applications that [...]
