Kentucky Holding First Medical Cannabis License Lottery

Kentucky officials are holding the first licensing lottery for the state’s medical cannabis industry on Monday, October 28, WLWT5 reports.

The state’s first lottery for medical cannabis licenses will cover cannabis cultivation and processing licenses, with a separate lottery for cannabis dispensary licenses expected sometime later this year. The chances to win a license are quite low — for the 584 cultivator applications received by the state, just 16 licenses will be awarded. Additionally, 344 processor applications were submitted but just 10 licenses will be issued. Overall, the state received nearly 5,000 business applications for the medical cannabis industry but the vast majority (4,076) are for dispensary licenses, of which only 48 will be available.

Today’s license drawing will be live-streamed at 2:00 pm.

Under the medical cannabis program approved by lawmakers in 2023, cultivators will be “responsible for planting, raising, harvesting, trimming, and curing raw plant material” for the state’s medical cannabis industry, while processors will be “responsible for processing and packaging raw plant material into usable product formats,” the report said.

Meanwhile, the state’s first cannabis business license was awarded last month to the testing lab KCA Labs, a Nicholasville-based facility that was previously testing consumer hemp products.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) announced the medical cannabis licensing lotteries in April.

The licensing process is ramping up as officials move to launch Kentucky’s medical cannabis program by January 1, 2025, as directed by state law.