She Paid $150,000 for a Florida Cannabis License and Got Nothing. Then She Found Another Way In.

GÜD Essence CEO Jasmine Johnson has been building a Black woman-led cannabis company in Florida since 2016. In an exclusive interview with High Times, she breaks down what equity in this market actually looks like in practice, and what it has cost her to find out.

“I’ve been involved in this process since 2016,” says Jasmine Johnson.

She says it the way people say things they have had to make peace with. Not bitterly. Not defeated. Just clearly, the way you state a fact that has become so familiar it no longer surprises you.

Johnson is the CEO of GÜD Essence, a Black woman-led cannabis company and one of the few in Florida positioned to operate as a licensed MMTC. A Miami native, she launched her first business at 18, co-founded Crescendo Jazz & Blues Lounge, a South Florida cultural institution that hosted more than 300 events, and has managed over $200 million in assets across cannabis, real estate and hospitality. She holds degrees from Florida A&M University and Florida International University and has built research partnerships with universities alongside her dispensary infrastructure.

None of that made Florida’s system easier.

Nearly a decade in, she has one operational dispensary in Clearwater, more locations in development, a cultivation and processing campus under construction and a purchase agreement tied to a notice of intent to award a license, with certain components still pending regulatory approval. Along the way: a 750-page application, a $150,000 filing fee, a two-year wait and no award. A key partner who withdrew just before an ownership change submission. Court rulings that kept extending already extended timelines.

“The average entrepreneur cannot sustain a decade-long timeline based on uncertainty,” she tells High Times.

The Gap Between the Story and the System

Florida talks about equity in cannabis the way most regulated markets talk about equity: at the licensing stage, in the language of opportunity and access, in the framing of a door being opened.

Johnson has been through that door. She knows what’s on the other side.

“Equity is often marketed at the licensing stage,” she says, “but the real challenge begins after. There’s a narrative around ‘opportunity,’ but in reality, the market favors operators with deep capital reserves, political relationships and existing infrastructure. Without those, equity becomes more symbolic than functional.”

That gap between the marketing and the mechanics is where GÜD Essence has had to operate. No institutional backing. No political shortcuts. Instead, Johnson leveraged roughly $10.3 million in equity from her family’s real estate portfolio, structured retail leases to shift buildout costs to landlords and built with a discipline that leaves no room for the kind of inefficiency better-funded operators absorb without thinking about it.

“Where others can absorb inefficiencies,” she says, “we’ve had to build with precision. Every dollar, every decision, every timeline matters.”

What It Actually Takes

Florida’s MMTC licensing process requires full vertical integration from the start: cultivation, processing and retail all at once, before a single dollar comes in. Timelines shift without warning. Approvals come slowly. Capital drains steadily.

“You’re investing millions before you generate a single dollar,” she says, “with no guarantee of when approvals will come.”

The system, she argues, underestimates what entry actually costs and what survival actually demands. Minority entrepreneurs typically enter without institutional backing, and the structure doesn’t account for that gap.

“It’s not just about getting a license,” she says. “It’s about having the resources to survive long enough to use it.”

She is direct about the low points. Multiple moments when the rational calculus pointed toward stopping. A filing that went nowhere. A partner who walked. Rulings that kept the finish line moving.

“What keeps me going is the long-term vision and responsibility to build something that creates access and opportunity beyond just my company,” she says. “That purpose outweighs the short-term challenges.”

What Florida Gets Wrong

If Florida were serious about diverse ownership, Johnson has a list.

Reduce the barriers to entry. Create pathways for phased growth instead of requiring full vertical integration upfront. Fix the timelines. Improve regulatory efficiency. Rethink the structural assumptions that make the whole system hostile to independent operators without institutional capital.

“The system underestimates the true cost of entry and survival,” she says.

She also points past the state level entirely. Florida’s current framework is too narrow in its focus on select cannabinoids and too slow to incorporate research. GÜD Essence is developing products targeting chronic pain, diabetes and other serious health conditions. The market she is building toward is more clinical and more ambitious than what Florida’s system currently accommodates.

“Florida has an opportunity to modernize its framework,” she says. “We are especially committed to developing products that support conditions like chronic pain, diabetes and other serious health challenges.”

Still Building

GÜD Essence today has one operational dispensary in Clearwater, with locations in development in Orlando, Jacksonville and Titusville. The cultivation and processing campus is moving forward. Johnson is still in it, still building, still working toward a version of this market that looks less like the one she entered in 2016.

What people outside Florida most misunderstand, she says, is simple: the capital required, the time required and the commitment required are not what anyone advertises when they talk about cannabis equity.

“This is not a market where you can move quickly or test concepts,” she says. “It requires full commitment upfront, with significant risk and delayed return.”

Nearly a decade in, Jasmine Johnson is still here. Still building. Still waiting for Florida to catch up to the story it keeps telling about itself.