Pubdate: Sun, 22 Jun 2014
Source: Orlando Sentinel (FL)
Copyright: 2014 Orlando Sentinel
Contact:  http://www.orlandosentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/325
Author: Scott Powers
Page: A1

LOCAL NURSERIES HOPE TO SEE GREEN IN MEDICAL POT

Nursery workers scrubbed their hands and put on robes and hair nets
before entering a 46-degree processing room, ready to prep organic
thyme arriving on conveyors from a greenhouse with computer-controlled
climate.

Kerry's Nursery owner Kerry Herndon envisions them working someday
with marijuana.

Last week Gov. Rick Scott signed the so-called "Charlotte's Web"
medical-marijuana law legalizing growth, processing, distribution and
sale of a non-euphoric variety of cannabis.

Herndon, a believer in both the medicinal and economic prospects of
Charlotte's Web, is on board.

"It's past time. The Florida Legislature did a very courageous thing,"
the Apopka nursery owner said.

Whether at Kerry's, with greenhouses on Keene Road and Fudge Road, or
another area nursery, there's a good chance Apopka will be a center of
Florida's soon-to-emerge legal-marijuana industry.

"It's an issue that's coming from outside of Apopka. We have to deal
with it in a forthright and open manner," said Apopka Mayor Joe
Kilsheimer. "We're not going to be able to avoid it."

Charlotte's Web cannabis could be just the start.

In November, voters will be asked to expand Florida's
legal-medical-marijuana trade to include all forms of pot. If
Amendment 2 is approved, many observers suspect that the companies
that get Charlotte's Web licenses will have inside tracks for the much
bigger business of coming years.

Statewide, there will be five regional licenses. Just 39 companies -
and 10 in the Apopka-Winter Garden-Mount Dora area - could qualify
because they sell at least 400,000 plants a year and have at least 30
years of continuous operation under one ownership.

Kerry's position as a qualified company, and Herndon's interest, has
made him popular with companies and entrepreneurs, many from out of
state, who want to become partners and get in on the ground floor.

"I have been contacted by a lot of crazy people who want to be my new
best friends," Herndon said. "I'm just a grower."

It's heady stuff for greenhouse owners such as Herndon who might be
great nurserymen and savvy businessmen but are not marijuana
distributors.

There are more area nurseries that are not quite big and old enough,
under state rules, but are hoping for a next round of licenses that
might open eligibility.

"I think it's silly," said Gail Hess of Landscape Nursery, which she
and her husband have owned on South Apopka -Vineland Road for 32
years. But it's too small, peaking at 300,000 plants a year. "We could
be ready. We've already got greenhouses. We've already got irrigation
systems. We have a full-time [state-certified professional] grower. I
don't know what the problem is."

It's an industry looking for a new cash crop. Nurserymen were hit hard
both by the recession and by changing markets, as big-box-store
companies rapidly gained more control of plant sales, driving down
wholesale prices, said Ben Bolusky, chief executive officer of the
Florida Nursery, Growers and Landscape Association.

"Most growers have never seen the downturn they experienced during
what we call the Great Recession. There were probably, I would guess,
somewhere between 20 [percent] and 30 percent of the growing
operations that went under," he said.

"The industry lost 89,000 jobs" in Florida, he continued. "A lot of
growers and landscape firms reduced the size of their staffs. They're
having to do more with less, having to reinvent themselves, finding
that niche in the marketplace that makes sense for them."

Many nurseries are interested in cannabis, he said, but no one can
commit yet.

"All eyes are on the Department of Health to see what sort of
rule-making they propose," Bolusky said. "We've not heard from them."

For now growers know nothing about how the licenses will be awarded,
how much they will cost, what minimum standards nurseries must meet
for everything from security to equipment, or how the products could
be sold. The department has set a daylong workshop July 7 in
Tallahassee to begin the rulewriting process.

Most of the qualified big growers are family-run businesses such as
Herndon's and Hess'. So the prospect of growing marijuana also raises
ethical and moral concerns, Bolusky said.

For Herndon there are no such qualms. The cannabis variety that
produces Charlotte's Web extract must have a high concentration of CBD
oil, which is used to treat neurological disorders, and a low
concentrate of THC oil, which gets people high. Herndon has been
researching CBD carefully.

"It's astonishing to me how many wonderful properties it has to help
so many people. ... Yet it's been illegal. It doesn't make any sense
to me," he said. "The CBD doesn't make you high. It just makes you
healthy if you have neurological problems."
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