$40k in fees, land surveyors, and a lot of research: How Columbus sisters finally got their cannabis dispensary approved

by Sara DiNatale, Mississippi Today
November 4, 2022

COLUMBUS – Denisha and Amber Glenn saw a whole future inside an abandoned Tuesday Morning.

The shuttered retail store was the perfect home for the sisters’ business venture: Holistika. In their vision, Holistika would be one of Mississippi’s first medical marijuana dispensaries. 

The sisters already had success as founders of their own small human resources company. With cannabis, they did their homework. 

“We started the planning process back in 2020,” said Amber Glenn. “We were looking at properties, putting together a business plan. With us being Black women, we knew there’d be challenges… so we have – since day one – done everything correctly and by the books.” 

They visited out-of-state expos, toured leading dispensaries, and studied the state’s Medical Cannabis Act, which outlined the burgeoning program. They met early with a city inspector, ensuring their shop’s architect plan accounted for every plumbing and electrical requirement. 

They were two self-made business women, regular Mississippians, navigating an industry largely dominated by white men and deep-pocket partnerships. A 2017 survey from Marijuana Business Daily found that less than 20% of marijuana business owners are minorities. 

“We’d want to meet with companies – white men – and they would talk to us on the phone, but when they saw us in person, they’d totally disappear,” Denisha Glenn said. 

The snags kept coming. 

When they couldn’t find a local land surveyor to take them as a client, they tracked down one willing to travel from two hours away. They were meticulous, desiring a bullet-proof application ready to upload the moment the state opened the online portal. 

None of it was enough. A competitor down the street uploaded their application materials faster. And in the battle for dispensary licenses across Mississippi, speed took precedence. 

The first wave of licenses went to some of the budding market’s biggest spenders – an attorney who teamed up with an industry insider from leading cannabis state Colorado; a man who owns a private plane charter company; people who have invested millions already on cultivation sites and to launch their own empires, applying for several dispensaries at once. 

The Glenn sisters said they were only aware of one other Black woman in Mississippi working to get a dispensary license. There’s likely a small number overall, but the state’s public list of licensed dispensaries doesn’t specify an owner’s race. 

Losing out on the license stung. But it was the months of application limbo and unanswered questions that really hurt, the sisters said. They expected a swift rejection so they could move on and apply for another location. Instead, they say, it took months for Holistika to get a formal rejection and its $40,000 in fees returned so they could try for a new location. 

“No matter the position in life, the public will like you more if they have access to you,” said Denisha Glenn, reflecting on more than two months it took to get Holistika’s first application rejected so she and her sister could apply for another store. “But it just seems like it’s a lack of personnel and a lack of training.” 

In a statement to Mississippi Today, the Mississippi Department of Revenue said it responds “timely to all inquiries, including those from the personal and legal representatives” – including Holistika –  “usually within one business day.” 

The Mississippi Department of Revenue has issued 139 dispensary licenses since it began accepting applications at the beginning of July. The department says it processes the applications in the order they were received.

 “The application portal licensing software time stamped the receipt of each application out to the 100^th millisecond,” MDOR spokespersonwoman Lexus Burns said in a statement. 

Milliseconds counted when applications first flooded into MDOR’s portal. With Mississippi’s law dictating no dispensary could be within 1,500 feet of each other, staking territory was vital. 

Using the first-come-first serve system is normal within the industry, said Jackson-based cannabis attorney Slates Veazey. 

“I struggle to figure out a more fair way,” he said. 

But the law also says applicants should be issued licenses within 30 days of receiving an application. The same, in theory, goes for those being rejected. 

“That’s important information to have,” Veazey said. “If you are getting rejected you need to look for other properties. You know you can move on. And the law gives applicants a short time period to challenge a license determination.” 

Denisha and Amber Glenn said they lost valuable time that could have meant the difference between nailing down another property before a dispensary competitor edged them out for a second time. 

Tucked next to her existing bakery, Nicole Huff has a roughly 1,200-square-foot space she’s working to open as Wildflower dispensary. It’s about 1,300 feet down the street from where the Glenn sisters hoped to open inside the old Tuesday Morning space. 

“July 5, 8 o’clock, I was here,” Huff said from the desk in her bakery’s office, “dragging and dropping everything into (the portal).” 

Thirteen days later, Huff was told her application was approved. But first there was a formatting issue with her land survey; she had 24 hours to have it redone. She wound up among the first people in the state to be issued a dispensary license. 

“I’m so proud of the State Department of Revenue,” Huff said. “They’re crossing every ‘t’ and dotting every ‘i.’”

She said she cashed out her 401(k) and sold her stocks to fund her dispensary business. While her contractor filed construction permits, Amber and Denisha Glenn scoured Columbus for an alternative location. 

“We wanted a back-up for the back-up,” Denisha Glenn said. 

They spent $8,500 on land surveys to determine that any hopeful locations were the right distances from churches, schools, daycares and Wildflower.

But landing on the right new spot still didn’t solve their problems. Their first application was still at a standstill. 

Denisha Glenn said it was an October call to the media spokesperson at the state Department of Health – which handles the licenses for cultivation, doctors, and patients – that finally got her in touch with the right people, including Cannabis Program Director Kris Jones Adcock. 

“Once we got connected to the right people who could make those decisions, they were very kind and very helpful,” she said. 

If an applicant’s bid for a license is denied because another dispensary was approved for license in their zone in the period after they applied, they are able to get the $40,000 in application fees returned. 

“The Mississippi State Department of Health understands the complexities and challenges of starting this type of program,” said spokesperson Liz Sharlot, who assisted the Glenn sisters. “We are gratified for all of the support and cooperation of the Department of Revenue. The Agency is happy to assist applicants of all types to ensure a smooth process for everyone.” 

With their fees returned, on Oct. 14, the sisters applied for a new license. It also meant letting go of the Tuesday Morning spot. They ended their lease. 

The new spot is closer to where they grew up in Columbus. 

“I think our new location is a godsend,” Denisha Glenn said. “It puts us closer to our community.”

In late October, the sisters got the news: Their new location was approved.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi medical marijuana regulation ‘stuck in constipation mode’

by Geoff Pender, Mississippi Today
October 12, 2022

Dozens of licensed cultivators have about 80,000 marijuana plants growing. Around 1,100 patients have signed up for medical marijuana, and 96 doctors or nurse practitioners are working to certify them. Small growers are complaining a large one has been allowed to skirt the rules.

But the Mississippi State Department of Health has zero investigators — and only three staffers — overseeing Mississippi’s new medical marijuana program.

So far only one testing facility has been licensed and is only partially ready to test products. Plus, the health department’s program director still has another job — running the department’s Office Against Interpersonal Violence.

Health Department officials told the Board of Health on Wednesday that the agency is in a four-month “provisional” period with licensed marijuana businesses. As it finds problems or violations, it’s typically just issuing “corrective actions,” giving marijuana businesses a chance to straighten up without hitting them with fines or sanctions or calling in law enforcement.

The Health Department in a meeting with its board Wednesday pledged transparency in its oversight of medical marijuana, shortly before going into a closed door session to brief the board on specific active marijuana program investigations. During its public meeting, some board members’ questions were deferred to the upcoming executive session.

Some of the Board of Health questions Wednesday for the Health Department on marijuana were prompted by a Mississippi Today article last week about Mockingbird Cannabis LLC, the largest marijuana grower licensed so far in Mississippi. Health Department documents and photos obtained by Mississippi Today showed the company did not follow state growing regulations.

And the department’s response so far — to write Mockingbird Cannabis LLC a letter listing “corrective actions” and not answer questions — has competitors crying foul. They said Mockingbird was allowed to grow and harvest a crop improperly and on the cheap in plastic- and cloth-covered greenhouses that will allow them to beat others growing in buildings to market as the state’s medical marijuana program gets rolling. 

READ MORE: Weed war: Medical marijuana competitors cry foul over Health Department’s response to company breaking rules

During board questions Wednesday, Mockingbird was not mentioned by name, but Health Board member Jim Perry said, “There has to be consequences for not following the law … If we send signals you are going to be economically rewarded by trying to jump over the line, that will provide incentive for others to do the same … If there’s an active investigation we can’t talk about it specifically yet.

” … But if actors are doing things clearly not allowed — outdoor growing is clearly not allowed, you’re not supposed to see it growing from a public area, and you’re supposed to have security, locks, solid doors and walls — that is flaunting and it will create a culture for others, if somebody’s able, to economically benefit from that. If we’re not ready to enforce, then we shouldn’t have let them start growing.”

State Health Officer Daniel Edney, head of the Health Department, responded to Perry, “I wholly disagree we are allowing anybody to get away with breaking the law.”

“If you know what I know, they are not going to economically benefit,” Edney said.

“My attitude is to be very strong as a regulator, but we are not ready — we do not even have investigators,” Edney said. “Right now, if we investigated everybody the majority would fail, primarily the smaller growers … The provisional work is predicated on if there is no evidence of diversion or harm to the public. If there is, there will be forceful action. In the interim, if there is an opportunity to bring people into compliance, we will work with them.”

The Health Department is trying to fill 25 positions for its medical marijuana program, and has three investigators scheduled to start by Nov. 1. But Edney said the agency, along with others in state government, is facing a long lag time of several months in getting new hires “onboarded,” officially hired and on payroll. This is a problem for all positions, including nurses, and not just for medical marijuana, Health Department officials said. Edney said the agency is operating with a 47% job vacancy rate.

Perry earlier in the board meeting said the state Personnel Board is “constipated” in getting new hires in. Later, Edney said of the marijuana program, “I am struggling with a very immature program. It is now stuck in that constipation mode.”

Other cultivators had complained that Mockingbird Cannabis was being allowed to grow, in greenhouses and a plastic covered “hoop house” at a secondary site, 12 miles from its main operations on Springridge Road near Raymond. Other cultivators said they were told they had to limit their cultivation to one site, and that they were not allowed to grow in greenhouses.

On Wednesday, Cannabis Program Director Kris Adcock told board members that Mockingbird has a “tier VI” cultivation license that provides for unlimited growing, or canopy, space. She said this means the company can grow at multiple locations, unlike those with smaller more limited licenses.

Health Department inspectors on Sept. 14, after receiving complaints likely from competitors, found that a Mockingbird grow site was out of compliance with several state growing regulations. Among the department’s findings at the site: Mockingbird was growing plants in greenhouses with tarp or clear plastic walls (some rolled up and some with large holes in them) and lax security that included a loosely chained back fence gate with a padlock. 

State regulations say “all cultivation activities must take place in indoor, enclosed, locked and secure facilities” that have a “complete roof enclosure supported by connecting permanent walls, constructed of solid materials extending from the ground to the roof.” The regulations also specify a long list of stringent security requirements including “commercial grade locks on all external doors.”

Health Department inspectors, records show, also found that Mockingbird was growing plants without the required state “seed-to-sale” tracking tags attached.

Mockingbird representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comments after the Wednesday board meeting. But in a lengthy interview last week, the company’s CEO said it had corrected problems the Health Department pointed out and it plans to have marijuana product available soon — likely the first for the new program.

But Adcock told board members Wednesday that numerous recent reports about marijuana being available to patients soon is probably overly optimistic, in part because there will be a “bottleneck” from lack of testing companies and state investigators.

Adcock was asked by the board about the state’s “seed-to-sale” tracking system, whether it truly tracks every plant grown.

“If they tagged it and put it in the system,” Adcock said.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.