Flaws found in Missouri's marijuana drug use program – KOMU 8

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A new report from State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick states Missouri’s multi-billion dollar marijuana industry was launched using a flawed application and evaluation process.
These flaws costs Missouri multiple millions of dollars in litigation expenses, according to the report.
The Division of Cannabis Regulation approved an application scoring process with significant design flaws, according to the report.
The DCR incurred over $12.5 million in costs associated with litigation and administrative appeals based on the 2019 litigation process. 
“I give credit to the Department of Health and Senior Services for standing up a program of this enormous scope in such a short period of time,” said Fitzpatrick, “It was a monumental task and I know it was not easy but at the same time it’s clear there were some significant issues with how license applications were evaluated and scored that cast a shadow over the program and ultimately cost the state millions of dollars.”
The report documents how the DCR allowed applicants to create their own unique identifier to be used on uploaded supporting documents during the scoring process, which allowed applicants to base that identifier on the company’s name.
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“What was meant to be a blind scoring process was able to be circumvented by applicants who provided indications of their identity throughout their applications, and the numbers show applicants who did that won licenses at a greatly increased rate compared to those who followed the rules and remained anonymous. These sorts of issues undermine the confidence applicants and taxpayers have in the legitimacy of the license granting process,” said Fitzpatrick.
The review states that 67 facility license applications found that 12 applications included Unique Application Identifier numbers that were reasonably indicative of the applicant’s business name, such that graders or reviewers familiar with the applicant could potentially deduce the applicant’s identity.
These applications were not penalized for violating redaction rules.
While only 15 percent of the overall population of applications received licenses, applicants with identifying UAs benefited from the lack of anonymity, with 83 percent being granted licenses, according to the report.
Other findings in the report include the DCR failing to process business change requests timely or to adequately track the progress of the request, according to the report.
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