Delaware’s saga of recreational marijuana market delays continues after six months of waiting for federal background checks for license holders to come through.
The Office of the Marijuana Commissioner (OMC) announced the lottery winners for the 110 available licenses for cultivation, manufacturing, testing and social equity retail facilities in October 2024 and announced the remaining 15 open retail winners in December 202.
While those winners are often referred to as “license holders,” they have not yet been issued their conditional license by OMC to begin operations.
OMC has been waiting for the FBI to give the “all clear” on the lottery winners in order to issue those licenses, but Majority Whip and State Rep. Ed Osienski (D-Newark) says communication between the FBI and OMC on what has been causing those delays had been sparse up until recently.
Rep. Osienski says he was under the impression mass layoffs and turmoil in Washington D.C. was causing the hold up, better a letter from the FBI to OMC on March 28 states Delaware Code lacks necessary explicit language identifying who is required to obtain a background check.
The FBI thus rejected Delaware’s request for a service code that is needed to conduct fingerprint-based background checks.
Rep. Osienski quickly swung into action and filed legislation to correct this technicality, but getting the background checks back on track still has a long way to go.
The bill has to go through two committee hearings, pass in both chambers of the General Assembly, and be signed into law by the governor. Once the changes become law, OMC would have to resubmit its request for the service code, putting the office back where it started in October.
Rep. Osienski says the bill is expected to be heard in the House Economic Development/Banking/Insurance & Commerce Committee on Tuesday, and if approved, he hopes to have it on the House agenda by Thursday.
He says although it was a notice of rejection, receiving a response from the FBI is a win in itself.
“The commissioner’s office is happy that they’re finally communicating. So now that this line of communication has opened up there, they’re optimistic that this is going to be quicker now compared to what it was — basically it was just an eye and no communication,” Rep Osienski said.
But even so, he feels more imminent action needs to be taken to grant lottery winners their conditional licenses.
April has long been held as the anticipated start date for Delaware’s recreational marijuana market, but these delays could set the opening back by several months.
While Delaware law does require license holders to pass a federal background check process, Rep. Osienski argues clearing the check may not be necessary to issue a conditional licenses.
Once OMC grants a lottery winner a conditional license, the license holders has 18 months to become operational. If they do so successfully, they would then qualify for an active license.
After having a legislative attorney investigate the matter, Rep. Osienski found that Delaware Code only requires “any fees or costs associated with obtaining a background check” to be paid before the Marijuana Commissioner can grant a license.
“I did forward [this finding] to the commissioner’s office and the governor’s office because my concern is that these 125 lottery winners are really being negatively impacted by this delay. I think there’s concern that if [OMC] issues any kind of license, conditional or active, that it would be unfortunate for the applicant if a background check came back,” Rep. Osienski said. “But I explained that my thoughts are, it’s unfortunate for them now because they can’t do anything. So I think if the commissioner sent [lottery winners] a letter stating that there is a risk in moving forward until we get that background check, I think they would be willing to sign on and take that risk just to start continually moving in the right direction.”
Several license holders have expressed frustrations with the delays, some of which have quit their jobs having expected to be running their marijuana business full-time by this point in the year.
Rep. Osienski says he has not received word from the commissioner’s office on if they would consider offering conditional licenses without the federal background checks on the condition they could later be revoked if ineligibility was uncovered.
OMC did not immediately respond to Delaware Public Media’s request for comment on their stance, nor clarification on a new timeline for the market opening date.
Delaware also currently lacks a marijuana commissioner following the resignation of Rob Coupe in January, which Rep. Osienski says only adds to the disarray. The office’s Deputy Commissioner Paul Hyland has been serving as the acting commissioner.
A spokesperson for the Meyer administration says interviews for the position are underway, and a decision is imminent in the coming weeks.
Lawmakers file legislation to get FBI background checks for marijuana license holders back on track after months of delays. Read More
