Leafly Sues Florida Over State’s Ban on Third-Party Cannabis Orders

Ganjapreneur report..

Leafly has filed a legal challenge against restrictions imposed by Florida’s Department of Health which banned Florida dispensaries from utilizing the website’s online ordering tools.

Seattle-based Leafly Holdings has filed a legal challenge contesting the Florida Department of Health’s (DOH) restrictions banning them and other third-party cannabis operators from doing business in the state, according to a News Service of Florida report. The action comes after the Health Department claimed in a February memo that Leafly’s business modelspecifically the practice of patients ordering cannabis through third-party sites who then pass on the order to local dispensaries, where patients pick their order upwas “directly related to the cultivation, processing and dispensing” of cannabis.

The memo resulted in most if not all of the third-party, online, ordering websites and dispensary contracts being canceled in Florida, the report says. Leafly is now asking an administrative judge to reverse the decision, saying the DOH used an “unadopted and invalid rule” to draw their conclusions.

Prior to the DOH memo, which threatened to impose fines on dispensaries who continued to work with Leafly and others, many patients and shops relied on the sites to fulfill online medical cannabis orders, the report notes. In the memo, then-DOH Chief of Staff Courtney Coppola said regulators had received complaints about patients and caregivers procuring medical cannabis through the online services. Coppola, now a deputy chief of staff for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, said in the memo that dispensaries were barred from doing business with websites “directly related to the dispensing of marijuana or marijuana delivery devices.”

Read full report at 

Leafly Sues Florida Over State’s Ban on Third-Party Cannabis Orders

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