Florida is poised to see a rush of new medical marijuana companies, after Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration recently issued 25 long-delayed licenses to operate in the state.
But industry experts say that the market to grow and sell marijuana has changed significantly as the state's growing stockpile of available licenses sat dormant for years — giving new companies only a narrow opportunity to break into the entrenched, $2 billion industry in the Sunshine State.
The ever-increasingly difficult path faced by the new licensees is a welcome consolation prize for the big medical marijuana companies already operating in Florida, which just lost a bruising fight with DeSantis over legalizing recreational marijuana use for adults in the nation's third-largest state. Had they won, existing pot companies would have been at the front of the line to sell non-medicinal products in a potential $6.1 billion dollar industry.
"It's going to be really difficult for any of these licensees to even put a dent in the current industry, especially in the way of prices," said Michael Minardi, who led a previous pot legalization ballot initiative. "And after so many years I think people are sick of the quality and prices, if they can find something better on the black market."
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