The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA) is now solidly under new management of Travis Kirkpatrick. In the fall of 2019, the entire Oklahoma Health Dept. faced yet another change in leadership when Tom Bates left to seek a different appointment from Governor Stitt. 
  SoonerPolitics was at the State Health Dept. when more than 100 cannabis patients held a protest of the intransigent silence of both Bates and his former director of the OMMA.
  But within weeks the new leadership reached out to industry advocates and legal experts seeking to make sense of the hastily-implemented new rules.
  This came at a time when all the licensed medical marijuana businesses (MMBs) were required to comply with rules they had no way of attaining compliance in.
  The new leadership of the OMMA, under the interim directorship of Travis Kirkpatrick; granted grace periods, but the monthly reporting of the OMMA began to show radical decreases in MMB licenses. Those growers, processors, & dispensaries seeking county documents (which didn't exist in most counties), were spending massive funds in legal services just to make their best showing of good faith to comply with the nuttiness at the OMMA.
  But now the new director seems to have nearly all of the MMB application backlog resolved. Only about 600 incompleted applications are in the system. 

 Vanessa Avery & Amy Young have filed a petition to end the decades-long prohibition on the adult possession of Cannabis plants (marijuana).  They filed their initiative petition with the Secretary of State's office, today.
  In a cursory review of the language, I see some ambiguities that I wish were spelled out more clearly.  There will be far more scrutiny in the days & months to come.
  The petition will require upwards of 200,000 qualified electors' signatures, in order to advance to an upcoming statewide election ballot. It would create another constitutional amendment. Our state's constitution has about 160 amendments in the 112 years of existence. 
  I'm not convinced that enough eyes have reviewed this document before filing it. Had more advisors been in the process, they may have caught some simple and repeated errors from the last petition we voted on.

  In the past 3 months the medical marijuana dispensaries have undergone significant market changes. Just 3 months ago, there were 25% more retail dispensary licenses than there currently are. 
  November Sales have also dropped by nearly 10% from the previous month.  The average licensed patient was spending 20% more, last August, than they did in November. The patient licensing continues to grow.
  Perhaps the drop in active dispensary licenses reflects those speculators who grabbed up a license a year earlier, but never followed through on setting up shop? Certainly there are several dispensaries who either failed economically, or sold their operations to another proprietor?
  Another factor could be the home growing patients? The optimal harvest came in last month. For those who can grow, and succeed in the horticultural arts, there is an annual cost savings of perhaps several thousand dollars.
  Another concern is the employers who are now emboldened to assert their medical preferences upon the employees. Several employees are facing termination for desk jobs because the employer accessed medical records or imposed drug testing.
​  See the full set of spreadsheets at our library, below.

  A recent commodity auction in Tennessee was supposed to help the new hemp farming segment of agriculture to get the optimal price for their fall crops. It was a disappointment. But that's the risk farmers always deal with. Many of the farmers had prepped their produce for the CBD oil producers. (see news account)
The 'biomass' product that was the subject of the "Pawhuska Bust" of last January, where local cops & an ignorant prosecutor insisted they had the state's largest marijuana bust in Oklahoma history. That payload was purchased by a Colorado CBD oil processor for making CBD Oil. The produce & the finished product is now federally legal in all 50 states, as long as the THC (psychoactive component) remains in trace levels under 0.3%. Trace hemp delivers the CBD oils & terpenes without impairing THC impact. It smells the same, but is federally legal.

Back to the Tennessee auction...
  Tuesday’s 2nd day focus of the International Hemp Auction & Market (IHAM) auction was the most valuable part of the hemp plant – the bud, the smokeable flower, which hopefully means more money for farmers. There weren't enough buyers to sustain the unexpected high volume of crops. The buyers quickly found out and decided to wait while new lots went downward in selling price. Eventually, the farmers pulled their crops and waited for another opportunity to sell for a better price. Some may give up on auctions and go directly to a processor to make a deal.
 This could signal a great retail price for Trace Hemp at a local CBD shop.

  Tennessee is way ahead of Oklahoma, in the Trace Hemp industry. It's partly because the Tennessee state govt. is motivated to build this farming opportunity.

  Oklahoma Medical Marijuana dispensaries now report and pay monthly sales taxes totaling roughly $6.5 million in the latest month of reporting. This equates to annual revenue for the state and municipalities at nearly $80 million, for medicine sales. In contrast, Opioid sales in Oklahoma brought no revenue and cost the state vast sums in emergency room costs to medicaid and even more when state addiction intervention services are factored in.
   For the first time in 11 months, the average patient sales actually went down. The August average patient spent $224 in purchases. But in September, the average patient spent $217 in cannabis medicines. This does not take into account the personal gardening options which a patient now has the legal authority to rely on.
  Total sales in Oklahoma are now on a trajectory to exceed $500 million annually, at the current rates of sales. ​

  Fifty years ago, one of the biggest healthcare challenges was the stomach ulcer. Pharmaceuticals were making vast wealth off the introduction of new antacids to give patients some hope of better relief, but they were all told that they had a mental health problem. Namely, they weren't dealing with stress and their lives, and that stress created the ulcer.
  So several millions of people were carrying a dangerous bacterial infection, and spreading it to many others. Not only were these patients lied to and left to suffer for the rest of their shortened lives; but they were shamed openly as  poorly dealing with stress.
  Then a curious county coroner in the Outback of Australia started collecting data on deceased individuals and saw the correlation of the bacterial presence and the health records indicating that ulcers were diagnosed.  Dr. Barry Marshall eventually got the help of Dr. Robin Warren
  But there was a complete stonewall of defiance from the established medical research gatekeepers. Every request for research help was immediately rebuffed without so much as curiosity about their unorthodox hypothesis. 

  In late August of 2018, the Oklahoma Dept of Health entered a brave new world of rejecting the 'reefer madness' propaganda that the federal drug czars spent billions to impose on the USA.
Slide 1:
  Establishment health bureaucrats tried desperately to subvert and derail the will of the people, but the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority still went live & online to get the patients connected with their effective medicines.

Slide 2:
  Here's a report from the OMMA to highlight the accomplishments of the first year. ​

  In the past decade the US has seen a vast change in societal prejudices regarding pharmacology. Ten years ago, pharmacy stocks were skyrocketing and the medical community was somewhat of a lapdog for whatever the cute pharmacy reps were telling them.
  If that wasn't enough to meet sales quotas, then weekend trips to conferences in exotic destinations usually resulting in getting physicians to begin writing scripts for the 'latest, greatest' drugs to come along.
  Old drugs were regarded with a generational snobbery which is often closely matching the same dates when patent protections expired.
  But recently we've seen several researchers bravely exploring the medical impacts of a raw and ancient herb called cannabis. 
 Three physicians have impressed me more by their temperament and curiosity than by their medical breakthroughs. I want to introduce them to  you.  Two of them have been to Oklahoma recently and I have had private conversations with them. The other has spoken with people I know and trust. Watch the videos of their clinical presentations at conferences and see if you agree?

  Over 12,000 needy patients are waiting for their medicine. The medicine their personal physician recommended for each of them.  That's because the OMMA is sliding downhill in their responsiveness to the people who pay their salaries.
  On June 1st the OMMA reported a major cleanup of the license processing software and databases. On that date they reported that 1203 licenses were still awaiting further action before a license can be issued. That's less than 1% and likely to include folks who either died, moved, or gave up on the licensing process.
  Even if we assume that as a baseline then in the past 14 weeks, the OMMA has fallen behind by over 12,000 additional applications.  This reached a serious failure over the past 2 weeks when the OMMA only issued about half the patient licenses that they normally issue, despite having a backlog that is higher than at any time in the past year of legalization.

  It's been 14 months since the Oklahoma Health Dept. first published a draft set of agency rules to govern the Medical Marijuana program, which the voters approved, despite the govt's objections. 
  The first set of rules were so grossly unconstitutional that the state Attorney General told the Board of Health to scrap the rules and start over, even before a filed lawsuit could get a court date.
  Then the Board of Health took a different tact, and decided to let the new industry destroy itself by a complete absence of product safety regulations.
  Product hit the shelves in late October. A product line that the federal govt. insists is so dangerous that people are imprisoned just for possessing a small bag of the dried plant material.
  Then it became the duty of the state legislature to enact a set of safety protocols. That started in February.  The so-called 'unity bill' (written mostly by marijuana reform advocates) formed the foundation of this omnibus permanent set of agency rules. But the legislature still deferred to the Health Dept. to write the finished product on what tests need to be  conducted independently, and monitored by the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA).