What’s the current cannabis status in Oklahoma?
As of earlier this year, Politico reported that Oklahoma is home to 2,688 dispensaries– a far and away number compared to the rest of the country. Those thousands of dispensaries service hundreds of thousands of medical patients. Close to 400,000 individuals are registered in the state’s medical cannabis system, approximately 10% of the total state population. In comparison, Pennsylvania is also a medical-only state, but just under 5% of the total state population is registered in their medical cannabis system. Earlier this year, Oklahoma residents were propositioned with the opportunity to expand their cannabis market to recreational, however, that notion failed. Contextually, it is fascinating that the densest dispensary state only serves registered medical patients and no adult-use consumers.
Oklahoma recently reported that overall, there is more flower than patients and were in a state of oversupply of cannabis. The oversupply and extremely finite number of consumers inevitably lead to a race to the bottom in terms of pricing. We saw the price of a pound of flower in Oklahoma go from $2,229 in 2020 to $915 in 2022 (source).
Oklahoma opened tons of dispensaries, grew tons of flower, and now they are in a paradigm of abundance. That brings us to the overselling.
What’s going on with Oklahoma and the fines?
In all regulated cannabis markets in the United States, there are daily purchase limits on cannabis. This is widely accepted, and each state has different regulations when it comes to how much cannabis one person can purchase in a day. In 2019, the owners of a dispensary chain called Sweet Leaf were sentenced to one year in prison for their role in an illegal ‘looping’ system. The ‘looping’ system allowed for one customer to come in, purchase their daily limit of cannabis, leave the store, and reenter to purchase more. Due to this issue, Sweet Leaf shuttered their doors entirely and staff came under a full investigation.
While in this case the employees were encouraging customers to violate the daily purchase limit law, some instances of violating the daily purchase limit laws are without malice. As we get to Oklahoma, many dispensary operators were unaware they even violated the daily purchase limit laws.
Oklahoma’s cannabis regulations state that the purchase limits are three ounces of flower per purchase, or the equivalent amount in concentrates or edibles or plants.
In early October 2023, High Times reported that 161 regulated medical dispensaries in Oklahoma have received fines for violating purchase limit regulations. They stated that “some providers could also lose their licenses for selling too much medical marijuana in a single transaction”, per the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA) who issued the fines. In one instance, a cannabis operator was charged a $5,000 fine for a transaction that exceeded the daily purchase limit as a first-time offender. Following the $5,000 fine, repeat offenders may receive fines of $15,000.
One owner reported to High Times that they received fines that totaled $35,000.
The OMMA stated that of the 161 instances where they found a dispensary guilty of overselling cannabis and received fines, 39 may be subject to revocation of licenses. If a dispensary operator loses their license due to overselling and violating cannabis compliance, they will be ineligible to reapply for a license for a minimum of five years.
What can be done now?
While 161 dispensaries are now responsible for thousands and thousands of dollars of fines and potentially losing their license or being forced out of the industry entirely, we wonder- what could have prevented this?
What many operators do across the nation is put their faith in POS software systems that they can rely on specifically for compliance. Many of the leading software systems in cannabis have capabilities for compliance safeguards in place to prevent overselling entirely. If a budtender goes to sell more than the daily purchase limit to a customer, medical or recreational, the system’s transaction limits feature will prevent that overselling transaction from occurring.
We would know- we’ve been around since 2010 and invented the Seed-to-Software system that is rooted in compliance and protecting cannabis operators. Our software support has a current 98% customer satisfaction score, and our users are safe 24/7 from exposing themselves to non-compliant purchases. Our transaction limits feature puts the power in our operator’s hands to ensure their sales are compliant, even if the limit laws change. Our users are able to track down purchases with ease with our advanced reporting features as well as create compliance safeguards to keep all purchases within legal limits.
If you are a cannabis operator who’s serious about their business’s compliance and longevity, reach out to us today to get started:
