"We're creating extremely lucrative lottery tickets," she said. "The number of folks who win the lottery and sell immediately is going to be astronomical."
(Applicants will need to cough up a nonrefundable $5,000 to enter the contest, which will take place in mid-December. No lottery will occur if there are fewer than 26 applicants for the 26 available social equity dispensary licenses. But Gunnigle said that with each license worth an estimated $7-10 million or more on the open market, the number of applicants expected is "well into the thousands.")
Last month, 355 applicants applied for 13 standard medical and recreational licenses that were given away in a lottery designed to bring dispensaries to rural parts of the state. That brought the total number of licenses in Arizona to 143. The social equity license program, mandated by Arizona's successful 2020 recreational marijuana initiative to help bring relief to communities "disproportionately impacted" by the war on drugs, is the next chance for people who want to break into the cannabis industry.