The supply-and-demand issues hindering the state's 12 medical marijuana dispensaries and 100,000 medical marijuana patients could worsen after a judge ruled that the process for issuing state dispensary licenses was rife with flaws.
Appellate Judge Clarkson Fisher, Jr. ruled in favor of eight losing dispensary applicants who argued the state Department of Health hadn't appropriately considered their 2018 applications, stating that the "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable" process was full of errors.
There were "numerous, indisputable anomalies in the scoring of the appellants' applications prevent us from having sufficient confidence in the process adopted by the Department or its results for the approval of (medical marijuana dispensaries) in this important industry," Fisher wrote in the Nov. 25 decision.
"We have considerable concerns about the Department's processes and the results produced that – without further agency proceedings and explanation – would leave us to conclude that the decisions in question are arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable," he added.