State officials say Kentucky's medical marijuana program is slowly but surely coming online.

Seeds are on the ground and dispensaries have secured locations.

The Office of Medical Cannabis testified to state lawmakers today.

And our June Lefler has more as we kick off our legislative update.

One medical marijuana dispensary has gained final state approval.

That's the post in Beaver Dam, Kentucky.

The dispensary is not open yet, but its website says it should be open this fall.

Currently, we have three cultivators in the state who are actually growing medical cannabis.

We'll have one process or by the end of next week that will be coming online to safety compliance facilities, which are tasked with testing the actual medical cannabis.

And then we have one dispensary, which I know is the focus of this discussion today that is, approved to operate.

The expectation is within the next month, we'll have more than one dispensary that will be ready to operate.

46 of our 48 dispensaries are, in their forever homes.

They've found their permanent locations.

We have two more that are, still needing to be settled, but we're working on that and should have those, done before the end of the year.

Here is our dispensary locations spread on a map.

But we have a, a good spread throughout the state that's going to, make travel to these dispensaries within an hour.

Definitely.

With under under two hours for anyone who is a card holder.

This Democrat from Lexington commends how the state has ran the program so far.

The thing that really sticks out to me is the feedback I've gotten from those, distributors, growers, and dispensary owners.

Is that the program we put together, they tell me, is one of the best that they've seen across the country.

The thoughtfulness of the regulations, the way that this has been structured, makes them feel confident that they are able to do business in a way that is safe.

It's well regulated, and they feel confident that they're going to be able to help Kentucky patients without exposing children.

And I think that's important to everyone in this room.

A Western Kentucky Republican worries kids will be more susceptible to finding marijuana in their homes and ingesting it.

And we're headed down the path of legalizing marijuana in this state.

And I think we're going to get to epidemic proportions once that happens.

So we are going to hear about that in committee.

That's that's how much it's growing and something we need to be concerned about.

In the 2023 state fiscal year, 18 children ingested and overdosed on THC.

These gummies, you see, and they're identical to buying like a thing of Skittles.

They look identical.

It can't.

It has to look like medicine because we're treating it as medicine.

And if it looks like candy and it tastes like candy, children are going to eat it.

State law approved by the General Assembly says medical cannabis cannot resemble major brand food products or otherwise appealed to minors.

The law does not say edibles cannot come in the form of gummies.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm June Leffler.

Thank you.

June and April state auditor Alison Ball announced an investigation into the medical marijuana program, specifically the application and lottery process.

The auditor's office told Wkyt today that, quote, the Office of Medical Cannabis finally provided us on October 17th with additional documentation we need for our examination.

This brings the total amount of documents our office has obtained at 1.7 million.

We are actively analyzing all the data we have and hope to start putting the pieces of the puzzle together soon.

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