Competition to grow medical marijuana in Utah heats up

NEPHI, Utah (AP) — The wide steel barn at the Utah alfalfa farm owned by Russell and Diane Jones will host their youngest son’s wedding ceremony subsequent month. By September, they wish the structure could be complete of marijuana flora.

The Joneses are fourth-era farmers, contributors of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Among 81 applicants for considered one of a handful of coveted spots as a licensed scientific marijuana grower in conservative Utah.

Though leaders in their faith once hostile the bid to legalize clinical marijuana, Russell Jones says he researched the drug’s ache-relieving advantages as he battled Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Now he and his wife want to be part of a rising enterprise that some doubted could ever come to the nation.

Competition to grow medical marijuana in Utah heats up 15

“This is groundbreaking for Utah,” Diane Jones stated. “Who does not want to make history?”

Others hoping to win licenses encompass large operations that develop hemp and a handful of out-of-kingdom growers. State officials are predicted to begin awarding up to 10 licenses later this month. The country these days opened the licensing procedure to out-of-nation growers, a trade that makes locals like hemp processor Darren Johnson fearful.

“Does it bode nicely for me? No, but they want it to be seamless. They don’t want hiccups. And I get that,” he stated. Some candidates fear the method stacks the deck against neighborhood growers in desire of “Big Weed,” or corporations that have effectively grown hashish in different states. The crop is criminal. The application requires a $2,500 rate, and submissions are hundreds of pages long. Those who get a license pay $a hundred,000 each yr to preserve it, similarly to shopping for tools and centers that may value hundreds of thousands.

Department of Agriculture officers stated they’re awarding greater factors to candidates with community ties as they overview applications. Eight packages got here from out-of-country growers. The nation is looking for farmers able to amplify operations as a call for increases while maintaining costs low and developing plant life freed from mold and pesticides.

At an indoor facility in North Salt Lake, Troy Young has a tendency to rows of hemp vegetation under the harsh, red glow of LED lights designed to nurture growth. Young grows industrial hemp, a nonpsychoactive cousin of marijuana legalized in Utah last yr.

He is among the ambitious growers who’ve invested in the device and set apart money, hoping to acquire a license to grow clinical marijuana. Cannabis in its various paperwork is difficult to grow and requires quite a few experimentations, he stated.

“It’s amusing for me. I get to be a mad scientist,” Young, fifty-two, said. He has a personal stake in marijuana legalization. Young lost his mom to opioid addiction. If she had to get right of entry to a less negative pain-relieving drug, like marijuana, he said, perhaps she’d still be alive.

Marijuana has been shown to help ease chronic pain, and studies have recommended medical marijuana legal guidelines may also lessen opioid prescribing. “There’s an actual want for it. It’s not just about the high,” Young said.

Johnson, the hemp processor, has a spacious warehouse in Salt Lake City with a group of technicians and gadgets primed to grow clinical marijuana. One room is full of huge beakers. Sticky hemp drips via paper filters and into the glass to extract CBD oil. Hemp is his facet enterprise. Johnson works full-time in production however views cultivating marijuana as a smart, long-term investment.

“Once (clinical marijuana) will become much less taboo and people opt for that over an opiate-primarily based drug, we’re going to see more demand and a stronger market,” he stated. Revenues from the nation’s scientific cannabis application are projected to attain $five.4 million in 2020, then grow to $16.2 million in 2021, said Richard Oborn, director of the state health department’s Center of Medical Cannabis.

Utah joined 33 states in legalizing scientific marijuana after citizens accepted a brand new law ultimate year. Leaders of the country’s major religion initially antagonistic the rush to invite citizens to approve medical marijuana but ultimately struck a compromise with a few advocates to allow medicinal use of the drug with extra law.

Whoever wins the country’s 10 grower licenses will develop cannabis in Utah. The country will also pick out licensed processors to make medical marijuana products bought in dispensaries expected to open next yr.

Jay Hunter
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