Kyle Hacker, owner of L&O Legacies, and his business partner moved to Colorado and spent seven years there in the cannabis industry, not expecting much to change in Kentucky... at least not on a timescale that worked for them.
"We thought it would be further in the future than it was," Hacker said.
Then they got wind that Kentucky was changing its tune on medical marijuana.
"We put in for an application, hoping that we would come back home, and ended up getting that application accepted and here we are today operating in Kentucky," Hacker said. "We were able to come home, bring our family back, and it's been a dream come true."
Not only did attitudes shift on medical marijuana, the official opening in Nicholasville saw the mayor and the governor both on hand to help them cut the ribbon. Gov. Andy Beshear said he's glad to see the burgeoning industry drawing Kentuckians back, but he added there's more work to be done.
"What we'll see as more of it come online is the prices will come down," Beshear said. "Now what we've got to do is expand the number of conditions. You still have a lot of people out there that have pain through, say Crohn's, that other states recognize and right now we don't. So that'll be our next step."
Despite the bipartisan buy-in that got the industry up and running, helping draw people like Kyle Hacker back, concerns linger about the process the state used to award those licenses. Kentucky Auditor Allison Ball announced last week she's investigating the Office of Medical Cannabis over complaints that big companies were also to get a leg up on smaller, in-state operations.
Beshear has defended the process as fair and transparent.