The businesses that won approval for licenses to grow and sell cannabis in Connecticut spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in total to submit thousands of applications to improve their chances of being selected in the lottery.
The winning applicants for retail and micro-cultivator licenses flooded the lottery system with entries, according to new data from the state Department of Consumer Protection. Take retail licenses as example. SLAP ASH LLC, which lists a business address in Glastonbury, accounted for 850 of the 8,360 applications submitted to the social equity lottery in the initial round, ultimately winning approval for two licenses.
In another example, Jananii LLC, which like SLAP ASH spent over $200,000 to submit more than 800 lottery entries, to won approval for a retail license. The company, which lists a business address in Clarksburg, Maryland, has yet to receive a provisional license. Social equity applicants not selected in that lottery were able to enter the general lottery.
Application fees vary depending on license type with the price of an entry for a social equity applicant to the retail lottery costing $250. Winning applicants must also pay licensing fees after passing background checks and other reviews.