Florida Medical Marijuana Licensure Client Alert

The Florida Department of Health, Office of Medical Marijuana Use, recently adopted three important new emergency rules. These rules include:

long awaited standards for the production of edibles,
new packaging requirements for all products, including existing derivative products, smokeable products, and edibles,
changes to certain existing rule definitions, and the adoption of a marijuana universal symbol.

Because the rules were adopted as emergency rules they are applicable immediately.

Edibles Rule Highlights:

The OMMU’s new edibles rule includes the following requirements and prohibitions, among others:

Edibles must be produced in a facility that complies with the requirements chapter 500, Florida Statutes, and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services rules established pursuant to that section.
Edibles are required to be in certain specified shapes (square, circle, rectangle, triangle, parallelogram, oval or diamond).
Edibles must not resemble any commercially available candy and must be packaged appropriately.
Edibles can be in the form of lozenges, gelatins, baked goods, chocolates, and drink powders. Interestingly, chocolates may not contain any caramel, nougat, nuts, fruit, honey, marshmallows, or any other such ingredient, toppings, or fillings.
Edibles cannot contain any color additives, be of a primary or bright color, cannot bear a resemblance to commercially available candy, and cannot be decorated with icing, sprinkles, or other toppings, in order to minimize their attraction to children.
Each serving of the edible must be marked with the newly adopted marijuana universal symbol.
A single serving portion of an edible cannot exceed 10 milligrams of THC, and a multiserving edible cannot contain more than 200 milligrams of THC.

Packaging Rule Highlights:

The OMMU’s new packaging rules include a number of changes to existing rules, including:

A prohibition on packaging including depictions of the product or any graphics or images other than the MMTC’s approved logo and the newly adopted universal symbol.
A requirement that packaging for derivative products that are not edibles be a single solid color or clear (and not neon).
As with current packaging requirements for smokeable products, a requirement that packaging for edibles must be plain, opaque and white.

MMTCs have 6 months to come into compliance with the new packaging requirements, but the requirements are effective immediately for new edible products.

Marijuana universal symbol:

The Office adopted the below symbol as Florida’s marijuana universal symbol, and the symbol must be added to all product packaging, in addition to being included on edible products.