The world of sports is changing its tune on marijuana.

Small businesses in Oklahoma are feeling the strain of the COVID-19 crisis, and that includes those in the medical marijuana industry.

"Senior citizens, military, people with PTSD - high anxiety; you know, how are we going to get the medicine to them,” asked John Koumbis, the owner of JKJ Processing.

Koumbis’ company is dedicated to making medicinal marijuana edibles. As this crisis develops, he feels like his business and his patients quality of life are hanging in the balance.

"I’ve made 11 calls to the OMMA and the legislature, and I’m not getting any response,” Koumbis said.

Darrell Carnes owns Mary Jane dispensary in Moore and says he’s also received very little guidance from the powers that be.

The story of cannabis legalization is, in part, a real estate story, as cannabis business owners buy and rent storefront property, scope out cultivation spaces, and engage with zoning boards. Today, eleven states and Washington, D.C. have legalized adult use cannabis, and a number of efforts to legalize by ballot or by legislature are underway, from New Jersey and New York to Oklahoma. 

The marijuana industry supported 240,000 jobs nationwide as 2020 began, according to a Leafly study that focuses on the cannabis job market. That’s 15 percent more marijuana-related jobs than at the beginning of 2019.

That percentage translates into 33,700 new jobs in 2019, with Massachusetts, Illinois, and Oklahoma leading the way on cannabis industry job growth.

Amid a flurry of tweaks to the medicinal marijuana system in the state, Oklahoma legislators have advanced bills that would alter the state’s cannabis regulations, including one that could bring cannabis delivery to medical cannabis patients. 

Tens of thousands of Oklahomans have already enrolled in the state’s medical marijuana program. In a little more than a month, those patients will purchase products that have undergone mandated testing. 

Beginning April 1, all medical cannabis dispensaries in the state will be required to carry products that have been tested in a laboratory licensed by the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority.

Facing multiple bills that they say would undermine their rights to medical marijuana, hundreds of protesters swarmed Oklahoma’s state capitol on Thursday.

The legislation that provoked the demonstration could have myriad effects: one proposal would ban billboards advertising medical cannabis; another would prohibit dispensaries from being built near churches. 

Oklahoma voters approved a measure legalizing medical marijuana in 2018, and the new law took effect last August.

The city with the most dispensaries based on its population figure is Missoula, Montana.

When most Americans pass by a store selling liquor, beer, or wine, they barely think twice about it. That’s because its existence isn’t novel; we all know plenty of folks who drink and buy alcohol. Outside of a few select cities, seeing a marijuana dispensary on a street corner still causes heads to turn.

Welcome to the wild west of weed.

Eighteen months after Oklahoma voters approved medical marijuana, the state is awash in cannabis retail shops. One in 13 adult Oklahomans has a patient card. With no qualifying medical conditions required, patients are finding it easy to get approval, with consultations sometimes just a video call away.

A price war has broken out on the retail side, with intense competition among more than 2,200 licensed dispensaries across the state. Some sit on the same block of a city street. Oklahoma leads the nation in per-capita dispensaries in medical marijuana states, with 56 per 100,000 residents. Retail sales topped $345 million in 2019, and state tax revenue was $55 million, according to the Oklahoma Tax Commission.

Reciprocity, the legal process allowing a state-issued license to be accepted in other states, is relatively common among medical cannabis states. 

But it seems that not that many people actually use reciprocity, particularly in high bar states like Oklahoma.