This month, Kentucky businesses can begin the process of applying for a license to dispense medical marijuana in the state. While this is quicker than the original target of January 2025, it will still be quite some time before medical dispensaries are open and operating inside the commonwealth. But, despite the long wait still ahead, it’s a step in the right direction for Kentuckians who will benefit from the therapeutic properties offered by the plant, and for businesses who wish to offer a legitimate – and regulated – source for those patients.
Some legislators, however, are still trying to slow the process, and putting unnecessary restrictions in the path of patients with conditions that qualify for treatment with marijuana. This includes measures limiting the qualifying conditions.
But while there may still be some handwringing among those law makers who oppose the policy, there’s plenty of evidence to show us that allowing the use of medicinal, and even recreational, marijuana won’t cause the sky to fall.
I can even testify to the fact directly, because I moved to Colorado in May of 2013, exactly eight months before the nation’s first recreational marijuana legislation became law in January of 2014. Not only did the sky not fall, in the decade to follow Colorado has thrived under the increased investment, tourism, and tax income the move has brought to the state.
Since making weed legal, Colorado dispensaries have sold nearly $12 billion in marijuana products, and numerous other states have followed suit with our neighbors to the north in Ohio the most recent to jump on the recreational sales bandwagon.
While the tax revenue from marijuana sales hasn’t solved every financial problem the state faces, it has helped fund school construction and fill other gaps in education and social program funding. It’s also helped the state save money on marijuana related arrests and convictions – although public intoxication is still illegal, just as it is with other legal intoxicants like alcohol.
It’s also brought a lot of jobs – not just in dispensaries that are selling products directly to eager customers, but in the industry that supports those dispensaries. Grow operations pump out product year round, with tightly controlled and secure indoor grow operations. Some of that product is sold directly as flower, while some of it is made into extracts and edibles.
One grow operation I interviewed with nine years ago, just before leaving Colorado to return home to Kentucky, told me they increased their annual revenue by more than $1 million by moving from using roughly one third of their plant product for extracts to using half for extracts, and hand manicuring the prettiest flowers for the top-shelf market.
This was all being done in an old warehouse, across the street from a police station, which had sat empty for years before being turned into a state of the art grow operation and extracts lab.
They were growing so fast, in fact, they were looking to take some of that money and invest it in other legal marijuana markets. That’s why they were looking for a technical writer (like me) to help them document their extract process and alter it, as necessary, to meet the requirements of other state regulators.
As these grow operations, and the dispensaries selling their products, expanded it brought jobs in other industries too, such as construction. During that first year after legalization I watched as several derelict strip malls in our neighborhood and others had new life breathed into them when a dispensary came in to serve as an anchor.
Yes, one of those new shops to benefit from a nearby dispensary was a Dunkin Donuts.
But there were also sushi restaurants. Sports bars. Even barber shops and hair salons. Once people came to these old strip malls to pick up their legal weed, they saw the other things the neighboring businesses had to offer, and when they had need, they returned to visit them too.
It’s a lesson Kentucky has been slow to pick up on, but it’s one that could benefit us too.
We’re behind the curve, though. While Governor Andy Beshear has been working hard to get Kentuckians a medicinal option – even issuing a blanket pardon for those with qualifying conditions and a doctor’s letter recommending the use of medical marijuana while waiting for regulations to be hashed out and implemented – Kentuckians have been forced to go out of state for their medicine, spending money in other states instead of here at home.
With Ohio’s plans to open dispensaries offering recreational sales as soon as this fall, Kentucky could see even more of its citizen’s paychecks go to benefit businesses outside the state. With the Kentucky patients forced to buy from recreational dispensaries (only Ohio patients can purchase medical marijuana in the state), that’s tax money that’s also benefiting Ohio.
Medical marijuana legalization at a federal level is inevitable, and the legalization of recreational marijuana, at state and federal levels, is only a matter of time too. Though it was in place for a very long time, marijuana prohibition, like alcohol prohibition, was destined for failure.
It’s caused more harm, and cost more money, than common sense regulation.
This is what the surveys of citizens and the experiences of places like Colorado have shown us. Legalization is going to happen.
The only question now is how long Kentucky will continue to cut off her nose to spite her face, hurting patients in need of relief, responsible recreational users, and the local businesses who want to pay taxes and provide jobs here at home while meeting the needs of both.
The wait has already been long. We hope what’s left of it ends sooner, rather than later. But that’s ultimately up to our legislature to decide.
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
