Marijuana Industry Miraculously Weathers Hurricane Irma

If you have paid any attention in the last few weeks to the news and social media outlets, you would know that many have faced the wraths of numerous hurricanes wreaking havoc in Houston, Southwest Asia, and various islands in the gulf. Irma swept through causing a path of destruction, leveling the British Virgin Islands, Barbuda, St. Martin. Along its path, Irma hit Florida causing severe flooding and prompting Governor Rick Scott to declare a state of emergency. Surprisingly, despite Irma's destruction, Florida's multimillion supply of medicinal marijuana remained untouched, reports say–

“We were thankfully spared the worst of the storm and have fared well considering the plight of others,” said Flor Santiesteban, a spokesman for Modern Health Concepts, based in Redland in Southwest Miami-Dade. “Our cultivation and processing facilities are up and running with backup power at the moment, and we resumed filling patient orders yesterday.”

Other distributors, including The Green Solution and Liberty Health Sciences in Alachua, made out fine, according to the companies. Bill Monroe, director of dispensary management for 3 Boys Farm, one of the newest license-holders in the state, said, “We got a little bit of damage to some top elements of the greenhouse from some things blown around,” but otherwise emerged intact.

Shockingly, all growing facilities were impacted by the hurricane, yet a majority of all greenhouses, distribution centers, and retail outlets sustained little damage. Unfortunately, gas shortages in the state stalled much of the delivery services to some 36,000 medical marijuana patients. There's good new though as delivery services resumed in Miami on Thursday and other distributors in South Florida hope to be making deliveries as early as next week.