FRANKFORT, Ky. [WKYT] - An investigation has been launched into Kentucky’s Medical Cannabis Program.
According to a press release, Auditor Allison Ball is investigating how the Office of Medical Cannabis handled the rollout of the state’s new medical marijuana program.
“Kentuckians should have confidence that state offices operate with transparency and integrity, and my office is committed to ensuring those standards,” she said in a statement.
One of the farmers who was not awarded a cultivator license through the Kentucky Office of Medical Cannabis is Co-Founder of Kentucky Farmed Michael Adair.
Adair said he was approached by his investor about entering the lottery as a cultivator.
“We have the space. We have just over five acres of greenhouses in Paris and so they wanted to go for cultivation of medical cannabis so we told them to go for it and we’ll grow it,”
He said he and other farmers believed because they were already hemp farmer they would receive priority in the lottery.
“I know that they can’t give everybody a license whatever obviously and play favoritism in a sense but at the same time don’t tell people one thing because the Kentucky hemp farmers just farmers in general feel like they were bait and switched,” Adair said.
Once he learned a majority of cultivators awarded licenses were not based in the commonwealth -- that’s when Adair says he started his own research -- which he later presented to Kentucky’s Attorney General, Auditor, and Office of Medical Cannabis offices.
“I’m not mad at the other people there are plenty of people that gamed the system, they gamed the system. I’m more upset that the administration, the office of medical cannabis allowed it to happen,” Adair said.
Adair says he believes the lack of checks in the lottery system aided in creating business that are able to cultivate, process and own a dispensary.
On March 31, 2023, the Governor signed Senate Bill 47 into law, legalizing medical cannabis for Kentucky patients beginning on January 1, 2025.
The Office of Medical Cannabis publicly announced and filed its regulations for cannabis business licensing and applications on April 18, 2024.
These regulations were reviewed and approved on numerous occasions by statutory and interim joint committees of the Kentucky General Assembly.
Throughout the entire process, we have been committed to transparency, which is why the lottery process was streamed live and online.
To date, no one has filed a legal claim challenging Kentucky’s medical cannabis laws or the Office of Medical Cannabis’ regulations.
The individuals who have come forward to express “concerns” went through the full process and did not complain until after not being selected in the lottery.