After a long summer of crafting regulations for their MMJ program, Oklahoma officially opened it’s application process for patients and business.
Per Cannabis Dispensary Magazine
Oklahoma voters approved a medical marijuana law June 26, and the state’s Department of Health, industry organizations and legislators spent the past two months going back and forth on emergency and permanent rules to implement the law and regulate the industry.
Licensing and patient applications will be available online beginning at 10 a.m. on Aug. 25, and licenses will be issued two weeks later. Once licenses are issued, cultivators can start growing plants immediately.
Patients must have a recommendation for medical marijuana from a certified physician, and they then present that recommendation to the state to apply for a card, which is valid for two years. There are no qualifying conditions, however—patients can qualify for the program with any medical reason that a doctor agrees medical marijuana can treat.
The long and somewhat complicated story of how Oklahoma got here started four years ago.
Oklahomans for Health launched in 2014 and was the first organization to petition the state for medical marijuana that same year, co-founder and chairman Chip Paul told Cannabis Business Times. Although the organization was not successful, Paul said the petition changed the conversation in Oklahoma and led to “Katie’s Law”—the state’s first CBD law—in 2015.
Additional petitioning efforts ensued until a medical marijuana legalization effort made the ballot and was passed by voters this summer on June 26, in the form of State Question 788, of which Paul was the principal author. The state government then had 30 days to design medical marijuana regulations and set up a marketplace for legal sales.
Read more about OK’s new MMJ program here