A new ‘Wild, Wild West’: Regulating state’s medical marijuana industry requires team effort | News

When a small, illegal medical marijuana grow operation was discovered near Fairmont by the Office of the Oklahoma State Fire Marshal earlier this year, everybody soon got to work.

After the state notified the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff Cory Rink said the two agencies together contacted the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics.

The three agencies then worked together and helped shut down the growing operation, which had begun growing marijuana plants before obtaining a commercial license, Rink said.

“Obviously, we got a search warrant for the property based on the information that we had from the other law enforcement entity,” he said. “We went in, executed the search warrant, confiscated all the illegal plants, and, of course, we tagged them as evidence … and then OBN took those plants and properly destroyed them.”

Wes Mongold, the undersheriff of Major County, said law enforcement agencies have been overwhelmed with the amount of legal and illegal grows, so the partnerships between agencies to regulate Oklahoma’s medical marijuana industry are paramount, especially as they continue to adapt with the medical marijuana industry.

“We’ve definitely experienced, as law enforcement, some growing pains in trying to enforce these grows,” Mongold said. “This would be impossible to do without the cooperation of other local and state agencies.”

‘Growing pains’

After the passage of State Question 788, the medical marijuana industry exploded, and hundreds of thousands of Oklahomans now hold a medical marijuana license.

Medical marijuana has helped patients with many issues such as anxiety, chronic pain and insomnia or trouble sleeping, and the industry has generated millions in sales tax revenue for the state, including $76,545,964 in state and local sales tax from January to November of this year, according to a December tax revenue report.

With the quick boom, however, quickly came an industry difficult to regulate.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health was given only 60 days after SQ 788 passed to begin issuing medical marijuana licenses, which state officials said created a “chaotic situation.”

“Sixty days to set up a whole agency was a really, really short period of time … and I think we’re just now able to get a little bit of relief on the payoffs and start being proactive,” said Adria Berry, executive director of Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority.

Berry said entry into the medical marijuana industry has low barriers, as OMMA is required to grant licenses to any and all applicants who provide the agency with all the correct paperwork and pay the necessary fees without any discretion.

Now, 13,785 businesses — including 9,403 growers, 2,519 dispensaries and 1,713 processors — are licensed in the state, including 62 growers, 30 dispensaries and 14 processors in Garfield County, a total 107 facilities.

‘One bad apple’

Oklahoma growers have to follow many rules and regulations, including tracking plants in a seed-to-sale system, having appropriate security measures, keeping waste disposal logs for five years and filling out sample field logs.

OMMA’s grow inspection form reference sheet has 66 items to look for, and if any licensed medical marijuana businesses are in violation of those rules and regulations, OBN spokesperson Mark Woodward said OBN tries to work with them on a case-by-case basis.

“We might give them, for example, 30 days to get into compliance,” Woodward said. “They could also face some fines or, possibly, suspension or revocation of their license.”

Sheriff Rink said businesses in the medical marijuana industry who are operating legally and following the rules and regulations can be hurt by the growers who are not.

“One bad apple that can spoil the whole bushel,” he said.

Brandy Frisbee, compliance officer for Natural Remedies MMJ Grow, said without a lot of regulation and enforcement of the rules and regulations thus far, some growers have been doing whatever they want, such as not having a seed-to-sale system, without concern for the repercussions.

“We’re not going to be considered a medicinal, valuable industry until we get rid of the free-for-all, ‘Wild, Wild West’ that’s going on because of the lack of enforcement,” she said.

The costs are much higher for growers who do follow all the laws and regulations than for those who do not, Frisbee said, adding that it’s harder to survive in the industry when competing against them.

Frisbee said she believes medical marijuana businesses not following the rules and regulations and illegal grows give the entire industry a bad reputation.

“It just gives the negative stigma that we created with the War on Drugs years ago more legs,” she said.

A joint effort

Berry said in November that OMMA was catching up on compliance inspections by hiring and then training more people to become compliance inspectors, and in a Dec. 6 email, she said it still was continuing to staff the compliance department.

“Our investigations unit is working closely with local and state law enforcement and have already begun investigations into OMMA-licensed businesses,” Berry said in the email.

OMMA hired an agency liaison working with state agencies and boards, she said, “to ensure we’re all on the same page, working to improve existing issues surrounding the industry — especially in rural Oklahoma.”

Woodward said the narcotics bureau ensures that medical marijuana businesses have security features in place to guard against theft and diversion, like pharmacies and hospitals.

Another duty, Woodward said, is looking for businesses that are operating without a license or are selling products illegally.

From April to September of this year, Woodward said OBN received around 50 to 100 tips each week regarding suspicious or potentially illegal grows. Since April, about 80 marijuana farms have been shut down by OBN or other assisted law enforcement agencies, with around 100 additional growing operations currently under investigation.

Most of those have been moving products out of state or received a registration under false pretenses, Woodward said. Oklahomans can pose as “ghost owners” and claim majority ownership in a business so a nonresident can avoid regulations that state that medical marijuana businesses in the state should be primarily owned by an Oklahoma resident.

Two of those 80 illegal grows have been in Major County.

In early-June, sheriff’s deputies and narcotics agents, with the assistance of Alfalfa County Sheriff’s Office and Cherokee Police Department, took down an unlicensed grow operation, seizing and destroying more than 8,000 marijuana plants.

Undersheriff Mongold said the investigation lasted about a month before the grow was shut down.

“We had to take several steps in order to ensure that we exhausted every effort to make sure the grow was legal or not.” he said, “because we don’t want to have a misstep and unduly enforce the law on operations that are legal because that’s not what we’re here to do.”

This story is the third part of a series about the growing medical marijuana industry in Northwest Oklahoma and the rest of the state.