What is the lottery process for applicants?

For each type of license, there will be two lotteries held to pick applicants:

• Social equity lottery
• General lottery

At least half of the licenses will go to applicants who qualify as Social Equity Applicants for each license type. To qualify as a social equity applicant, the individual who is applying for the cannabis establishment license must own or control at least 65 percent of the business and meet the income and residency requirements outlined in the law.

A Social Equity Applicant is somebody who:

• Had an average household income of less than three times the State median household income over the last 3 tax years; AND,
• Was a resident of a disproportionately impacted area for at least 5 of the past 10 years; OR
• Was a resident of a disproportionately impacted area for at least 9 years before the age of 18.

For the social equity lottery:

• Applicants who apply for the lottery must pay the lottery fee and put on their lottery application that they are applying as a Social Equity Applicant.
• Those who are applying as a Social Equity Applicant will be assigned a number and entered into the social equity lottery.
• An outside lottery operator will run the lottery for the social equity applicants. The lottery operator will not know which numbers have been assigned to which applicants.

Once the social equity lottery has been run, DCP will share the lottery winners with the Social Equity Council. The Social Equity Council will look at the information submitted and decide if the applicants picked in the lottery qualify as a social equity applicant.

• If applicant qualify as a social equity applicant, a background check will be run.
• If the applicant does NOT qualify as a social equity applicant, the applicant can pay the difference for the full lottery fee and have their application entered into the general lottery. If the applicant does not pay the full lottery fee, their application will not be entered into the general lottery and the application process will end. Another application will be picked from the social equity lottery.

Once all of the social equity applicants have been chosen, a general lottery will be run. The general lottery will include:

• Applicants who are not social equity applicants and have paid the full lottery fee.
• Applicants who were picked in the social equity lottery, but
  • Did not qualify as a social lottery applicant, and
  • Paid the difference for the full lottery fee.
• Social equity applicants who were not picked in the social equity lottery.

Like the social equity lottery, the general lottery will be run by an outside operator. Lottery applicants will be picked until the Department has filled all of the available licenses for each license type.