Until he was released from the Baltimore Ravens earlier this year, Eugene Monroe was the NFLs foremost advocate for allowing players to use medical marijuana. Now hes embroiled in a new pot dispute as a partner in a company suing Maryland regulators for rejecting its application to grow the drug.
Monroe and other officials with Green Thumb Industries said at a Tuesday news conference that they were unfairly – and illegally – denied a lucrative license to grow medical marijuana.
But they also said they dont want the lawsuit they filed on Monday to further delay the long-beleaguered program.
I played a long career in the NFL, suffered many injuries, and Im a Maryland resident that looks to use cannabis as therapy, said Monroe, who was released from his $37.5 million contract in June. I dont want to see this drag out longer, too.
Last month, the Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission said it expects medical marijuana to become available to patients in the summer of 2017, four years after it was first legalized.
Since then, the program has become embroiled in controversies that threaten additional delays, including objections to the lack of racial diversity in companies approved to grow and criticism of a last-minute reshuffling of applicants to spread cultivation sites around the state.
Green Thumb Industries, an offshoot of a Chicago-based medical marijuana grower with associated dispensaries in Massachusetts and Nevada, put in one of the 15 highest-ranking applications to grow medical marijuana in Maryland.
But regulators denied licenses to Green Thumb Industries and another company, Maryland Cultivation and Processing, to make room for lower-ranked growers in underrepresented areas.
Regulators say their approach was the fairest way to follow the part of the medical marijuana legalization law that calls for geographic diversity among cultivation sites.
But the commission earlier had advised grower applicants that their choice of location would not be relevant for the initial application stages and that they did not need to demonstrate geographic diversity.
One lesson I learned early in life, and its followed me throughout my football career, is that you dont change the rules after the game has been played, and yet thats whats happened here, Monroe said.
The commission and the state attorney generals office have declined to comment on the lawsuit.
But Buddy Robshaw, the vice chairman of the commission, told The Washington Post earlier this month that the commission was saying that the precise addresses of grow sites was not necessary when it told applicants that location is not relevant.
He said regulators later asked what counties growers wanted to operate in as a way of ensuring they were balanced throughout Maryland.
News Moderator: Katelyn Baker
Full Article: NFLs Top Advocate For Medical Marijuana Takes On Maryland Regulators
Author: Fenit Nirappil
Contact: The Washington Post
Photo Credit: Fenit Nirappil
Website: The Washington Post
