INDIANTOWN, Fla. — At a nondescript resort in rural Indiantown, you might find the least humid place in Florida.

Matt Fauver showed WPTV where harvested cannabis is hung to dry for a little over a week. He said it’s important to store the product, which is sold by prescription in Florida, in dark, dry and cool conditions that are closely monitored and maintained by equipment.

Humidity is one of the many things that Fauver, the cultivation director, and his approximately 200 colleagues at Cresco Labs must control at cultivation facilities to ensure consistency and compliance with a number of state regulations on marijuana.

Jamie Ostroff

“There are a lot of misconceptions about how clean or viable a product is,” Fauver said. “I mean, it’s tested. It’s more rigorous than the pharmaceutical industry.”

Cresco grows, processes and packages cannabis products on-site and sells these products in its Sunnyside stores throughout Florida.

Each marijuana plant is cloned from a “mother” plant, in order to maintain similar genetic traits. Plants are individually labeled and tracked, according to state law.

Jamie Ostroff

Fauver said this prevents theft at facilities and allows officials to better investigate any problems that might arise later.

Plants are moved to different areas of the climate- and light-controlled facility throughout their lives, under conditions designed to avoid contamination. Once the flower is harvested, samples are sent to an outside laboratory for testing, to ensure the product is not contaminated.

Samples of finished products are also sent to the laboratory for testing once packaged.

Jamie Ostroff

“I never thought I would work in the cannabis industry in my lifetime,” said David Grelck, post-harvest operations manager at Cresco. “I’m at the age I grew up, and it was highly illegal – very taboo, you know – for the egg to break on the frying pan. ‘It’s your brain doing drugs.'”

Now, Grelck and his colleagues ensure each quarter that the facility is ready for state inspectors.

“We already have a safe, legal market. We have a medical program. People are using it,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said. during a press conference in West Palm Beach on Wednesday. “It’s being used in a way that wasn’t originally advertised, but it is what it is.”

Jamie Ostroff

The governor made it clear he did not support Amendment 3, which would allow recreational use for adults if the measure passed. DeSantis says it will pose safety risks to children and fill public spaces with the smell of marijuana smoke.

“I haven’t seen any outcry from people in Colorado, in California, who have gone this route, saying, ‘Man, you should do what we did. It worked really well.’ Nobody says that,” DeSantis said.

“I wouldn’t say it’s true,” said Fauver, a California native who recently moved to Florida. “I think the only people who would regret this would be the black market producers, because they are no longer able to make the money they used to make.”

Jamie Ostroff

In Florida, constitutional amendments require 60% of voters to vote “yes” to pass. If Amendment 3 passes, state lawmakers would have six months to put regulations in place before adult recreational use becomes legal.

The amendment would automatically convert medical marijuana licenses that cannabis businesses must maintain to allow them to sell to adults over 21 without a prescription.

Jamie Ostroff

WPTV’s precedent on Amendment 3: