"Walgreens of Weed": How Pot Law's Seedy Start Created Florida's Cannabis Oligopoly

Something smells funky in Florida's medical marijuana industry — and it's not coming from a smoldering joint.

Back in 2016, an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) secretly recorded Tallahassee developer J.T. Burnette — who has since married Kim Rivers, CEO of the multimillion-dollar Florida-based cannabis giant Truelieve — boasting that he and his childhood friend, then-Florida house member Halsey Beshears (R-Monticello), tweaked a cannabis bill signed into law in 2014 that governed the state's then-fledgling medical marijuana industry by cordoning off access to commercial licenses.