The License for a Grow Processing and a Distribution Operation Is $2,500
Video Transcribed: This is Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Attorney, Isaiah Brydie. This article is about how to start up a grow processing and distribution operation for medical marijuana in Oklahoma. So you actually can open up a grow operation, a processing operation, and a distribution operation, all three in one.
You can do that, however, you do have to file for a license for all three of those entities. So in Oklahoma, the license for a grow processing and a distribution operation is $2,500. So what do you need when you actually apply for the license itself? Well, at first, everyone who applies for the license needs to be at least 25 years of age, and they need to be an Oklahoma resident. Now, you can open up these operations underneath a business entity.
So for example, if you want to start an LLC and then have the LLC itself apply for all of these licenses, you can do that. The LLC itself actually has to be an Oklahoma LLC, and it needs to be owned … You need to be able to prove that ownership of that LLC, at least 75% of that ownership stake, is in an Oklahoma resident. So if you have three people who own an LLC, or three people who are members of an LLC, and one of those members is, let’s say, a Texas resident but the other two members are Oklahoma residents, you’ve met that requirement.
Another thing that you need to do is you need to make sure that you’re able to pass a background check in order to have those licenses. So personally, you have to pass a background check, or if it’s a business organization, the members of the business organization being able to pass a background check.
And also, too, you need to make sure that … You have to show the address of the actual operation where they grow op will be, or where the distribution center will be in itself. You need to show that that is more than a thousand feet away from a school. There’s actually an online tracker. If you go to the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana website, they have an online tracker that will measure and give you a straight line from your proposed business operation area to the nearest school and all that kind of stuff. Just making sure that you are more than a thousand feet from the nearest school.
All right, so let’s say that you get your license and everything, everything’s gone smoothly and you’re starting out your business and stuff like that. So what are some things that Oklahoma requires you to do when you get your operation up and running? Well, you’re required to do monthly reporting.
So your monthly reporting would be due on the 15th of each month. And in that monthly reporting, you have to report the amount of marijuana that you bought from a processor or from a grower if you’re not a grower or a processor yourself. You need to do the amounts sold to individuals and what kind of license those individuals themselves have.
You need to schedule out the amount of marijuana waste that you have, and all of those kinds of things. There are a lot of, there’s a whole list of the statutory requirements that you’re required to report on. So you just go through the list and just make sure you report on those every month, and you also make sure that you have records of that reporting at your places of business. The state of Oklahoma can come in and actually audit those records at your business location. So they could pop up at 123 Main Street where your distribution center is, and they could pop up on you and ask to inspect your records. That’s completely within the statute.
And there are penalties for not following all of these statutory requirements too, and the penalties can be substantial. I think the lowest one I saw was $5,000, that’s on the actual website. So you’re paying at least double the amount that you paid for your initial license in a penalty if you fail to meet all of these statutory requirements. Additionally, you’re required to follow certain food, health, and safety roles as well.
Because marijuana would be a substance that you are ingesting. There are laws as far as, you know, the marijuana itself has to fall into food safety regulations. If you’re dealing with edibles, you have to follow food healthy standards. If you’re dealing with a concentrate, then you need to follow food healthy standards.
So there are food health and safety standards that are set out in the statute itself. And then additionally, you can’t operate your grow or your retail or your processing facility in a home or a building that has a sleeping area in it.
That falls both under, I want to say some zoning laws, and also as well, broadly, falling under food and health and safety statutory requirements. So you can’t operate a grow op or a retail operation or anything like that outside of your home, or a place that has a sleeping abode in it. The next thing you have to understand is that you cannot have a delivery service in the state of Oklahoma currently.
So what that means is you can’t be Uber Eats for marijuana. You can’t be the delivery man that you might see or hear about in other jurisdictions. You can’t do that in the state of Oklahoma. It is expressly restricted in the statute that allows for medical marijuana.
However, what you can do is, as long as your commercial business meets all of the requirements that are laid out in the statute, as far as making sure that your building is secure from any theft, making sure that you can control the people who come into your business and things like that. You can actually have a drive-thru window, which is something that actually quite a good number of retailers here, and distributors here, are doing.
So aside from that, you also have some personal limits as well when you actually buy the bud. This is on the personal side. I think this is a really interesting fact. So a person themselves is limited as to the quantity of bud they can purchase, have on their possession, and have at their home.
So as far as an individual, that individual is only allowed to purchase three ounces of marijuana. I’m sorry, they’re only allowed to have three ounces of marijuana on their persons at any time. At their home, an individual is only allowed to have eight ounces of marijuana at their home.
A person is only allowed to buy either six mature plants and/or, that’s a very important fact, that and/or. And/or six seedlings. So you can buy either six mature plants and six seedlings, or you can buy six mature plants or six seedlings.
I hope I expressed that adequately, did get the point across. And also too, you’re only allowed to have one ounce of any kind of concentrate or 72 ounces of any edibles. So you run into an interesting dichotomy here where while you’re only allowed to have eight ounces of actual bud at your house, you’re allowed to have, potentially, 12 plants. Well, that’s an interesting thing because you can’t control the amount of bud that actually grows on a plant.
You may run into an instance where you have 13 or 15 ounces of bud on a plant, which is obviously in violation of the eight-ounce bud restriction that you’re allowed to have at your home. It’s an interesting thing. I don’t know of any instances where people have been investigated or anything like that on that matter, but I just thought it was a really, really interesting thing.
Another aside is if you are a medical professional and you’re a person, let’s say, you’re an in-home hospice care person. You care for people who had debilitating illnesses at the home. You actually can file for what’s called a caregiver’s license, where if the person that you are caring for has a valid medical marijuana license themselves, you can actually apply for a license to purchase the marijuana for them and to actually administer the marijuana to that individual as their caregiver.
It’s a really interesting thing, as far as giving even better services and care to those that are in your employ. So, yeah, it’s really interesting stuff. The laws are really interesting. One, you know, has only been around for about a year or so, as the making of this video. Go ahead and get in contact with us at the information left along with this video, and you guys have a good day.