The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation announced on Thursday the results of a lottery to award social equity cannabis dispensary licenses, with 55 winners chosen out of 589 applicants to operate as retailers in the state’s lucrative recreational marijuana market.
“Social equity and justice are the heart and soul of the Adult-Use Cannabis Program in Illinois,” Toi Hutchinson, senior cannabis advisor to Gov.
To qualify for the social equity license lottery, applicants must have majority ownership by a person who has lived for five of the last 10 years in an area disproportionately affected by the War on Drugs, someone who has an arrest or conviction for a cannabis-related offense, or a family member of an individual impacted by the drug war.
One of the licenses awarded on Thursday went to social equity applicant Frank Cowan, who applied with the support of Nevada-based Planet 13, the operator of what is billed as the world’s largest dispensary only minutes from the Las Vegas Strip.
Joe Caltabiano, CEO of cannabis SPAC Choice Consolidation Corp.
“This is a true equity program that acknowledges the past and sets a precedent for how the process can be managed moving forward,” Caltabiano writes in an email.
The social equity license lottery was held in accordance with a bill passed in June to bolster the social equity program outlined in the Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act of 2019 , which went into effect on January 1, 2020.
Last week, the first lottery was held with 55 conditional dispensary license winners from a pool of 626 applicants announced on July 29.
Since then, the adult-use marijuana market has grown by leaps and bounds, with dispensaries selling a record $127.8 million worth of recreational cannabis in July.
Although applicants have been waiting for more than a year for licenses, some of the conditional licenses issued through the lotteries are likely to change hands before the dispensaries open for business.
Although state regulations prohibit the transfer of craft cultivator licenses until after December 21, permits for other cannabis businesses are free of similar restrictions.
But critics say that allowing social equity licenses to be sold to unqualified buyers goes against the spirit of the program, which was put into place to encourage Black and Brown ownership in an industry primarily run by white men.
I’ve documented stories about legalization and the cannabis industry in my home state of California, the nation’s largest legal marijuana market, and beyond, receiving input in the process from a host of sources including C-suite executives, congressmen, illicit cultivators, and sack slingers.