Florida-based medical cannabis doctor, Dr. Joseph Dorn, is suing state health officials for attempting to strip him of his medical license, prohibit him from prescribing medical cannabis, and charge him a $10,000 fine.

Dorn was the target of an investigation in 2018, where two undercover state health department agents were referred to as “Patient O.G.” and “Patient B.D.” made appointments posing as patients to investigate Dorn’s practice, according to Health News Florida. Both agents made claims that they suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, which Dorn conducted a review and prescribed medical cannabis to ease those symptoms.

“The two undercover employees consulted with Dr. Dorn under their aliases, lied to his face, and were intentionally evasive so that they could obtain a medical marijuana recommendation from Dr. Dorn. Ultimately, Dr. Dorn recommended medical marijuana for both patients, believing that they qualified,” the lawsuit explained of the investigation.

Administrative Law Judge W. David Watkins cleared Dorn of wrongdoing in March 2022, stating the Dorn has fully complied with state law. “The evidence of record undermines DOH’s argument that Dr. Dorn’s practice is nothing more than an ‘open gate’ to medical marijuana. In the case of both O.G. and B.D. (and presumably the other 28 patients examined), Dr. Dorn conducted a detailed and thorough assessment of the patient’s condition prior to prescribing medical marijuana,” Watkins wrote last year.

Now Dorn is suing the Florida State Health Department, as well as the two involved officers, for $50,000 in damages. The lawsuit claims that the agents “grossly exceeded their authority and violated state and federal law along the way,” and that the event caused Dorn to “[suffer] millions of dollars of damages due to loss of revenue and the damage to his reputation due to the actions and inactions.”

“Despite substantial testimony in the proceedings before the Florida Board of Medicine, no evidence whatsoever was found which would support a finding of probable cause for an action to revoke Dr. Dom’s medical license,” the lawsuit states.

Not only has Dorn been a practitioner in Florida for more than 30 years, but he was also one of Florida’s first physicians to prescribe medical cannabis to patients. This became possible when voters passed a constitutional amendment back in 2016. A law was also passed in 2017 to implement a foundation for the medical cannabis industry, including guidelines for patients and doctors.

The lawsuit claims that the health department agents did not provide any explanation as to why they targeted Dorn in the first place, according to Attorney Ryan Andrews. “The predicate for why they visited Dr. Dorn’s office unannounced was so lacking that calling it a ‘hunch’ would be gratuitous,” Andrews said. “DOH [Department of Health] had no basis to visit Dr. Dorn.”

Andrews called the investigation “indefensible.” “I can’t wait to hear their defenses, because I don’t think they have any,” he concluded.

While litigation on this case continues, the state of Florida continues to see a lot of progress both in medical cannabis and recreational cannabis. On April 10, regulators released new medical cannabis rules, which includes up to 22 retail medical cannabis licenses, and also increases the renewal fee required by all license holders every two years from the current fee of $60,000 to more than $1 million.

Advocates with Smart and Safe Florida are hard at work collecting signatures to add a recreational cannabis amendment to the ballot in 2024. So far, they’ve gathered more than 420,000 of the required 891,589 signatures to be placed on the ballot. The signature collecting campaign began in 2022, and has received a large amount of funding from companies such as Trulieve, which provided $5 million.

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Recently, President Joe Biden announced a plan to pardon those convicted of simple cannabis possession, which left many wondering if this could be the first step towards full legalization or the federal declassification of cannabis. Though nothing official has been announced, there are many in the legal cannabis industry that wonder whether the U.S. will go the same route as Canada, who fully legalized in 2018.

Shimmy Posen, a Canadian attorney with over a decade of experience working with cannabis corporate finance, mergers, and acquisitions believes that this will eventually lead to the U.S. legalizing cannabis, much like Canada did in 2018. He said it is inevitable due to the global market and how much capital the cannabis industry can generate in international markets. “Being at the forefront of all this, my desk has become a trading floor for certain peripheral elements of these deals. I felt like a sports agent at times,” Posen said. “It got to be very complex, because there were lots of intricacies of how much growers could own, whether they would allow franchising or not and so much more that had to be ironed out. It was very knowledge-centric.”

Posen said he has worked with several Israeli and American companies that went public but is interested in countries where cannabis sales are legal.  “Anywhere in the world really, where cannabis was touching capital markets, we were aware of it at my desk, and advising clients and helping them build businesses. Some of the more recent deals include the Sundial acquisition.”

Posen said that in the global marketplace of cannabis, Canada stands out due to its legal status. “What distinguishes Canada from the rest of the world is this government truly allowed cannabis into the capital markets to interact with the financial systems,” he said. “But, in countries like the U.S. they still have issues with cannabis in banking systems due to the federal legality issues. We don’t have that problem in Canada since the illegality was removed.”

Posen said that he thinks Canada is a global leader, but admits the system isn’t perfect and has its flaws that need to be worked out. “One thing Canada got wrong, is they lumped under one umbrella THC and CBD,” Posen said. “Lots of people have issues coming into Canada on flights with CBD products, especially from the U.S., because they don’t think it’s a problem. But CBD is a controlled substance in Canada; you can’t buy it over the counter at a gas station or pharmacies, you can only get it at licensed dealers since it’s regulated and controlled. People fly in and get in trouble quite often because they don’t know this.”

Another problem Canada faced, according to Posen, is that once cannabis was legalized in 2018, for a period of around a year, only flower [was] allowed to be sold.” It took about a year for other products such as vapes, concentrates, and edibles to be available legally, so there was a market for all these products in the ‘black market,’” Posen said. “I don’t call them ‘black market’ though; I refer to them as the legacy market. Now, consumers can buy all these products in the legal retail stores. But it was a big mess. Canada has certainly taken a bullet for the rest of the world to see how this could work for totally legal cannabis  But, many of the legacy market underground stores are starting to transition into the legal markets because that is the future. No one goes out to buy moonshine; they buy known brands of hard liquor. Same [idea] with cannabis. This just takes time, it’s a process.”

Posen said that he thinks the cannabis sector in the global financial marketplace will continue to grow exponentially and even skyrocket. “The projectiles are clear. The industry is such a behemoth today and it’s only going to grow. It’s global already, and that’s without full legalization from countries like Germany and the U.S., so you can imagine what will happen when those countries fully allow legal cannabis,” he said. “One leading country especially for medicinal cannabis is Israel, who really started the industry standard for medical cannabis.” 

Posen said he is keeping an eye out for countries like Mexico, Thailand, Germany, and the U.S., among others but thinks eventually, most countries will allow legal, regulated cannabis sales. 

He thinks the recent announcement by Biden regarding cannabis convictions to be a first good step. “I suspect that eventually, the federal illegality will be removed, or the U.S. will just let the states determine what they want, kind of like how it went down during prohibition—just let local jurisdictions determine what they want to do.”

Although reluctant to offer a date or timeline, Posen said he believes that legalization is coming to the U.S. “As soon as it happens, it will remove many of the obstacles the U.S. faces in the public capital markets. Also, many other  countries will follow immediately and also legalize because many countries only have it illegal because of the U.S.,” Posen said. “People want individuals to make their own decisions, but at the same time not promote it for children. It’s about freedom but responsible use. The sky’s the limit.”

For more information, or to contact Mr. Posen, please visit the Garfinkle Biderman page.

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