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Am I Prepared To Apply for a Medical Marihuana Facilities Grow License?

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Thinking about beginning a Medical Marihuana Grow to ensure that you can offer cannabis to the medical marihuana market? Are you a Medical Marihuana Act licensed caregiver that wants to take your product commercial on a larger scale? Thanks to the Medical Marihuana Facilities Licensing Act, now you can do so legally, so long as you can successfully acquire a license from the State to do so. This could be a great opportunity with several brand-new owners seeing incredible degrees of profit as well as success in the market. However, if you make this decision, you do need to make sure that you obtain a Michigan commercial grow license. Failing to do so will result in your venture being, probably, illegal as well as result in court activity that will certainly paralyze your business before it starts.

Sadly, the Michigan commercial grow license application is a long, complicated and expensive process. Ask a medical marijuana lawyer, and also they will tell you that you need to see to it that you are prepared. Let’s consider the steps you will certainly need to take, the team you need to build as well as the position that you may find yourself in.

Who Can Apply?

The first concern to ask yourself is whether or not you are eligible to apply for a Medical Marihuana Facilities license. Fortunately is that anyone, an individual or a full company can apply for a license. Applications began in 2017, as well as there is presently no target date to finish the required forms. Naturally, there are specific people, that, due to the fact that they can not satisfy the minimum monetary demands, or because they have a disqualifying criminal conviction in their history, are precluded from applying. Nevertheless, assuming you don’t have a disqualifying criminal conviction, and you, or your group of financiers, meet the minimal financial requirements, there are two main steps to the MMFLA licensing application process. The very first step will certainly be completed whether you have a final location for your structure or not. Nevertheless, if you have already picked an area before sending your State application, something that we extremely suggest, you can complete both actions at the exact same time.

Pre-Qualification

Pre-qualification is the first step, and it begins with an extensive background check. There are 2 sections– 401 as well as 404 of the Medical Marihuana Facilities Licensing Act (M.C.L. 333.27401 et seq.) to refer to when identifying who you need to legally divulge as well as whether they have a relevant business interest in your operation. This consists of people such as the spouse of the individual and also all corporate officers. This is one of the reasons that it is worth consulting with an Mmma attorney as it can be fairly challenging to get all the details correct. The State will certainly intend to do a deep dive into the backgrounds of not only all of the “interested parties,” or members/owners of your cannabis company, but the State will also look into the histories of every one of those person’s spouses too. Should anyone have a disqualifying criminal conviction in their past, or not be of “good moral character,” the State can deny the whole application. In other words, if there is one bad apple in the bunch, the State throws out the entire application. For that reason, it is very important to understand about the histories of the individuals you have in your investment group, prior to applying for your Medical Marihuana Facilities License. There are a great deal of things that an experienced attorney can do to assist you plan for your application, and to make sure that any possible issues with your application are understood, divulged or gotten ready for before the application is submitted. Nonetheless, this isn’t the only reason why an attorney will usually be an important and needed hire.

Take into consideration The Expense

Before your details can be assessed by an expert from the Bureau of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA), Bureau of Medical Marihuana Regulation (BMMR), you need to pay a $6000 fee for your application. BMMR will reject to move on with your application until this has been paid completely. Along with being costly, this fee is non-refundable so you want to make sure that there are no problems with your application that might result in it being rejected. An MMFLA attorney can ensure that this holds true and also help you navigate any type of difficult issues. Further, before you can obtain State authorization for operation, you will also need to obtain a municipal or city authorization. Each city or township will certainly also require you to complete an application and also you will certainly have to pay an application fee there as well. The application price can vary depending on what the city wants to charge, however, they can not charge greater than $5,000.00. Most cities and also townships are charging the maximum amount. In total, the application costs alone are most likely to be in excess of $10,000.00. That doesn’t consist of the costs of ancillary services, such as accounting professionals, engineers, marketing professionals as well as various other solutions required for your application to be complete.

Once you have collected and paid the application fees, all candidates as well as supplemental candidates will have their finger prints taken. You might assume that if you currently have had your fingerprints taken by local police this step can be missed. Nevertheless, BMMR will decline finger prints unless they are asked for and also collected by them via the licensing procedure. You will certainly have to go to an authorized location where your fingerprints can be collected digitally and sent for evaluation by the State.

Facility License

This is the second step and bear in mind, if you have already picked a place to grow marijuana, you can finish this step with the first. You have to be prepared to fulfill all the MMFLA rules. During this step, you will certainly need to have a business plan. Nonetheless, that plan needs to include particular things. You must have all of the parts called for by the State: facility plan, security plan, marketing plan, staffing plan, technology plan, waste disposal plan (if applicable), and also a record keeping plan. There are specific minimum requirements set forth in the Administrative Rules that regulate MMFLA facilities, with which you must show your business is in compliance.

Your facility should be located in a city or township that allows MMFLA companies to run. The MMFLA has strict policies for individuals and organisations planning to grow in a municipality. If you intend to grow in a district, it should have an ordinance that authorizes marihuana facility operations. Colloquially, the municipality must have “opted-in” to the Medical Marihuana Facilities Licensing Act (list of Michigan municipalities who have opted in to MMFLA), as well as it has to have passed a regulatory ordinance that sets for the regulations as well as guidelines for those facilities to operate within the city or township. The complete guidelines can be located in 205, yet if you do have any kind of concerns you need to call your municipal authority. Or, alternatively, get your attorney to do this for you. As the application progresses, BMMR will contact applicants, offering information on any type of various other requirements, consisting of a pre-licensure inspection of your location or facility.

Approved

Lastly, you might acquire authorization for your license. After you are notified of this, you will certainly need to pay for a regulatory assessment. Presently, the regulatory assessments for 2018 are as follows:

Safety Compliance Facility and Secured Transporters– $0.00.

Class A Grow License– $10,000.

Class B Grow License– $48,000.00.

Class C Grow License– $48,000.00.

Processor and Provisioning Center– $48,000.00.

Likely, the State will establish an across the board equivalent regulatory assessment for all licenses in 2019. Regulatory assessments are subject to change each year, so it is difficult to predict exactly what it will be. Nevertheless, starting in 2019, regardless of which license you obtain, expect the assessment to be imposed as well as for that assessment to be substantial.

Conclusion.

We hope this helps you choose whether you are ready to apply for a Michigan commercial grow license. Remember, with an attorney at hand, this process can be far much easier, as well as you will certainly acquire professional advice on how to proceed correctly to make certain that your application is accepted. Even after you get approval, legal advice is suggested to assure you stay on top of changes to the legislation as well as policies, and so that you can stay in compliance as well as keep your company open.

Here at Fowler & Williams, PLC, we concentrate on aiding clients get MMFLA licenses and making sure continuing compliance.

Should you decide to retain counsel to aid you on your licensing journey, give us a phone call.

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