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Illinois Department of Agriculture – Adult Use Cannabis

Illinois Department of Agriculture

Listen to the PodCast or Watch the YouTube on Craft Grow Applications. For the specific statute we discuss- download link below: IL First Round of Questions Department of Ag – Craft Grower, Transporter, Infuser Licenses

Call about your craft growers, infuser or transporter license in Illinois

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“Questions about craft grower, infuser, and transporter licenses” were answered on January 21, 2020, and confused people because it seems like the Craft Grower license automatically includes its own Infuser license – while the Infusers are allow to do everything the craft growers are. So it seems that you can use an Infuser License to do a vape pen industry. An additional round of questions will be answered by the Illinois Department of Agriculture on these few licenses but get your email to  AGR.AdultUse@illinois.gov – The next round of answers will be here February 4th check back in for more from the Illinois Department of Agriculture on adult use cannabis. 

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Illinois Craft Grower, Infuser, and Transporter License Questions and Answers Round 1 from IL Dept. of Ag.

The State of Illinois is taking questions from Craft Grower license applicants. – due date February 4, 2020.

Craft Growers License ApplicationApplicants are encouraged to submit written questions to the Department regarding the application, application materials, or application process. The Illinois dept of agriculture will post its responses on two dates as set forth below. The Department may summarize related questions and will not publish responses to repetitive questions, questions unrelated to the application process, or fact-specific hypothetical questions.

The Illinois Department of Agriculture will post the questions it receives and the Department’s responses on two dates. The first round of responses, for questions received by the Illinois dept of agriculture by 5:00 p.m. on January 14, 2020, will be posted by 5:00 p.m. on January 21, 2020. The second round of responses, for questions received by 5:00 p.m. on January 28, 2020, will be posted by 5:00 p.m. on February 4, 2020. The Department will redact the questioner’s identity from the posted question and answer. The Department will not respond to non-written questions or questions submitted after January 28, 2020. Questions may be submitted to: AGR.AdultUse@illinois.gov

Infuser can do anything craft grower license can do – says IL Dept. of Ag.

infuser license ag
transporter QA dept of ag

Good news, everybody, the Department of Agriculture just answered your questions about the craft grow application. Anyway, if you would have emailed agr.adultuse@illinois.gov before today, actually you can still continue to email them, but they answer these questions. And so they’ve answered the first round of questions and now we know a lot more about the transporter license, the infuser license and also the craft grower license, which so many people want.

The thing that they did was they published a webpage and here it is. Also, make sure that you take note, it is, the link, in the description section. They’ve answered many, many questions and some of them I think we should go over and to help with that, I created a small little banner right here so we’ll put a ticker down.

Illinois Department of Agriculture Answered Questions on Cannabis licenses

Oh it’s not in ticker mode. That’s too bad. That is too bad. Here, I’m going to now put that into ticker mode. All right, and show that. Great, now I’ll blow this up so that you guys can focus on it. And of course please do direct yourself over to first round applications questions and they’ve kind of broken it up into general, craft grower, infuser transporter, social equity, and zoning questions. The zoning questions are Oh so important. Your general questions, they are quite general to be honest. They don’t really answer all that much that you didn’t already know. Most of the stuff from the general questions you can actually find on the front cover of any of the applications. It explains to you how much this stuff is, where to drop it off and the general questions continue to address that. Right now is the 21st, that’s why they dropped this on us so you can get your questions in, again, to the same address.

It’s this agr.adultuse@illinois.gov about what license is right for you and what questions that you have. One of them and it is ticking down there at the bottom of the screen. It was actually answered because if you read the descriptions, particularly when it gets into the stuff about your disclosures of your company, financial interest or a principal officer, those ones, they actually usually have a nice little list of things. This is the transporter license right here. It has the least list. It’s very sparse when you compare it to the craft grower or to the infuser license. And so on here, they do say like, well you’re supposed to disclose the article to some corporation but they didn’t mention specifically the operating agreement and then they answered that in the affirmative on question 27 down here. Yes, you are going to need the operating agreement, this is a pretty interesting question that kind of came out of left field for me.

Workshops for cannabis applicants with John Marshall and Illinois Department of Agriculture.

It’s question a number seven. And number seven asks, “Will the department offer workshops for applicants? If so, where and on what dates?” So evidently the department is partnering with the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, of course, that you guys know what that is, that’s the social equity map. You guys are probably actually quite familiar with this and we were looking at it earlier.

Anyway, question seven, back to that, it continues to explain that the dates and locations of these workshops as a combination between the department of DCEO and John Marshall Law School to offer technical assistance. That’s going to be pretty interesting. Stay tuned to the adult use cannabis page of the department that is the Illinois Department of Agriculture, which is the page that we’re on right now. And that page will be updated when there is more information available so that’s pretty cool.

Craft grower needs real estate

And then do you need a physical location and are we in the craft grow? No, these are just general. The physical location is actually required. A proposed location is a required component, but the building does not have to be built yet. And that’s true. Now you either … You need an address, you need to say like it’s here and we have the rights for that property right over here, but you don’t necessarily need a building. You might actually want to build. And then it’s a number 10, you have to have an application per license that you want. And then there’s some other ones that are kind of interesting. One of them that they answered, and I want to say it’s scrolling down there. The binary points, number 17, so that’s going to be social equity, veteran, Illinois resident, those are going to be your binary points.

Amendments reduced number of points needed for transporter license from 85% to 75%

And then the other ones that are down there had to do with some very interesting things about, they said if you got more than 75% of the points ,you like won. But that’s not what it is. And it’s one of those. If there are … You need to get 75% of the points to be eligible to win, but only the top 40 scores will win. And they all have to be over 75 to win. So it’s more of a ceiling. Gosh, I used the wrong word. It’s more of a floor to be eligible to win. There could be like 60 teams that score over that 75 and then there may be those tie breaking points.

Transporter Points Amendment

So pay attention to those. Transporters do not have a liquid asset requirement so that is something that we can now confirm and it’s right there on answer 29. The liquid acid requirement for each category; grow and infuse must demonstrate 20K, transporters do not have such a requirement.

Which kind of brings me back to the whole point. How are they expecting this business model to fly when there is no real barrier to entry and there’s no requirement to prove financial soundness? Interesting. Maybe it’s going to be a tack on a license that the other a cannabis license holders have will then have their own transportation, at least to start. Who knows where this is going to like evolve into.

Cannabis QA IL Dept of Ag

Anyway, if you guys have any questions on that, you can now direct them to the Department of Agriculture’s page, which is down there. Hopefully we will see all of you tomorrow because tomorrow is Wednesday and if it’s 2:00 PM on a Wednesday, there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to find me over here on…

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