Blaming the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Gov. J.B. Pritzker Monday issued an executive order delaying licenses to grow, transport and infuse cannabis products.
The Illinois Department of Agriculture, which regulates cannabis cultivation facilities, will ultimately announce when the licenses will be issued, according to Pritzker’s order.
The licenses, which were expected to be awarded Wednesday, include 40 for both craft growers and infusers and an undetermined number of licenses for transporters.
The public health crisis prompted Pritzker to twice push the deadline for submitting applications for the licenses from the original due date of March 16 to April 30. Pritzker signed a similar order in late April that indefinitely delayed the issuance of 75 new pot shop licenses. Officials have since signaled that the licenses will be awarded intermittently in the coming months.
“The COVID-19 pandemic and the 6-week deadline extension granted to applicants have caused unforeseeable delays in the application review process,” said Jerry Costello II, acting director of the state’s agriculture department. “The Department is working tirelessly to ensure that applications are scored and awarded in a fair, deliberate and equitable manner.”
Unlike applicants for dispensary licenses, those seeking small-scale cultivation licenses had to lock down property to apply. That puts an additional financial strain on would-be business owners attempting to crack into a highly competitive industry with onerous regulations.
The delayed licenses are the first prioritized for so-called social equity in an effort to bolster minority participation in the state’s overwhelmingly white pot industry. But as the flood of diverse applicants wait out the COVID-19 crisis to learn their fate, existing players are notching huge sales in the first months of full-on legalization.
Recreational pot sales topped $44 million in May, marking the most successful month of sales since the drug was fully legalized.
