Regulators in Illinois have prolonged the operational deadline for some craft hashish growers within the state.
The state’s Division of Agriculture said that its administrative guidelines “enable for craft growers to obtain an operational extension for good trigger proven, on the Division’s discretion,” and as such, it “has granted an operational extension to all craft grower license holders as a consequence of numerous components, together with ongoing Covid-19 impacts and provide chain points.”
Beneath the state’s adult-use hashish program, a “craft grower license permits the holder to domesticate, dry, remedy and bundle hashish,” according to Illinois Cannabiz Attorneys, which offers a primer on the license:
“To use for this license, one should submit a accomplished utility to the Division of Agriculture. The quantity of hashish a license holder can develop is proscribed by sq. footage. A craft grower might have as much as 5,000 sq. toes of cover house for marijuana vegetation within the flowering stage. It ought to be famous that this house solely consists of the house occupied by the vegetation and doesn’t embrace any aisles or walkways in between the vegetation. This quantity could also be elevated over time in increments of three,000 sq. toes based mostly on the division’s dedication of market want, capability, and the license holder’s historical past of compliance. The most important house that shall be allowed by the Division shall be 14,000 sq. toes for vegetation within the flowering stage.”
The Department of Agriculture said that it had “beforehand approved an operational deadline extension for 2021 Craft Growers which required them to turn out to be operational by March 1, 2023,” however that it “is now authorizing an extra extension relevant to all 2021 Craft Growers, extending their operational deadline to February 1, 2024.”
Authorized adult-use hashish gross sales took impact in Illinois in 2020, the results of a invoice signed by Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker the earlier 12 months.
“As the primary state within the nation to completely legalize adult-use hashish by the legislative course of, Illinois exemplifies the very best of democracy: a bipartisan and deep dedication to raised the lives of all of our folks,” Pritzker said at the time. “Legalizing adult-use hashish brings an vital and overdue change to our state, and it’s the best factor to do. This laws will clear the cannabis-related data of nonviolent offenders by an environment friendly mixture of automated expungement, gubernatorial pardon and particular person court docket motion. I’m so proud that our state is main with fairness and justice in its strategy to hashish legalization and its regulatory framework. Due to the work of the folks right here at present and so many extra all throughout our state, Illinois is shifting ahead with empathy and hope.”
The state hasn’t appeared again ever since. In his “state of the state” handle final month, Pritzker said that marijuana legalization “has created greater than 30,000 jobs since 2020, and Illinois is residence to the nation’s most numerous hashish business and a number of the largest firms.”
In January, Pritzker’s administration touted a record-setting 12 months for hashish gross sales in 2022, saying that “grownup use hashish dispensaries bought $1,552,324,820.37 value of product, a rise of greater than 12% from 2021 and 131% from 2020, the primary 12 months hashish gross sales have been first legally allowed in Illinois.”
“Once I signed the Hashish Regulation and Tax Act into regulation in 2019, we set out on an formidable objective: to create probably the most equitable and economically affluent hashish business within the nation. Our information from 2022 reveals that we’re effectively on our method in the direction of making that concept a actuality,” Pritzker said in a statement in January. “Not solely did we break our earlier gross sales report by greater than 12% with a complete of greater than $1.5 billion, we additionally noticed the primary of our social fairness grownup use hashish dispensaries open their doorways for enterprise—paving the way in which for a fair stronger 2023.”