About 102,000 people have received medical marijuana cards, allowing them to purchase cannabis products at licensed dispensaries.
More than 800 companies that were denied licenses to grow, distribute and sell pot have filed appeals, asking an administrative hearing commission to determine if the scoring system was fair or flawed.
The scoring system also has drawn the attention of Missouri lawmakers, who have grilled the department over the rocky rollout of the program.
Kings Garden Midwest, which had sought a cannabis cultivation license, said in its lawsuit that the “scoring process used by the Department was arbitrary and capricious in that other applicants were awarded more points for the same and/or similar answers provided by Kings Garden.”
To gauge whether that was the case, the company said it needs information about other applicants.
DHSS has argued that the constitutional amendment that created the program says the information it collects should remain confidential.
But, the court wrote, “because applications are not judged solely on their own merits but are ranked competitively against other applications, the only way to determine whether the Department denied Kings Garden’s applications in an arbitrary or capricious manner is to compare its applications against information from those of successful applicants.”
