Kentucky state auditor to investigate how Beshear Administration handled medical cannabis lottery

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - Kentucky State Auditor Allison Ball says she wants people to have confidence that “state offices operate with transparency and integrity.”

That is why she is investigating the lottery that awarded lucrative licenses to grow, process and sell medical marijuana.

Ball said she made the decision after her office “continued to receive complaints about how the Office of Medical Cannabis administered the lottery process for awarding medical cannabis business licenses,” according to a press release Thursday.

Nearly 5,000 applicants entered a lottery for 74 total licenses.

Applicants seeking a license to sell medical marijuana paid a non-refundable $5,000 fee to participate.

Joe Boese, owner of Hemptopia, was one of those taking a chance, and he was one of thousands disappointed.

He now believes the lottery process was not fair to small in-state business owners.

“In order to win in this lottery system that they said was fair,” Boese said Friday, “you had to have millions of dollars because it seems like the only people that won were these big companies. I don’t know any small company that won, personally.”

Dee Dee Taylor, CEO of 502 Hemp Wellness Center, also wants to know if in-state small business owners were caught in a system where they could not compete.

“What companies from outside of this state did,” Taylor said, “is they created a multitude of new businesses in Kentucky and then they applied.”

Ball will be looking into what was already a highly publicized lottery, streamed live on camera, with Gov. Andy Beshear himself in attendance.

A spokesperson for Beshear released a statement Friday, saying in part: “Throughout the entire process we have been committed to transparency, which is why the lottery process was streamed live and online.”

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