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One of the ways in which legalizing medical marijuana was sold to Arkansas voters was to emphasize — not to put too fine a point on it — the money Arkansans could earn from the business. The thinking, essentially, was that medical marijuana can help people, and if we’re going to legalize it to help people, Arkansans should be able to profit from it.

To that end, Amendment 98, which was approved in 2016, required at least 60% of dispensary and cultivator ownership to be held by Arkansans. But as you’ll read in this issue of Arkansas Business, determining actual ownership is difficult, too difficult.

In addition, as Mark Friedman and Kyle Massey write, “management contracts have put many out-of-state players in charge of Arkansas cannabis enterprises, muddying certainty on who ‘owns’ marijuana companies and who controls their income.”

That means it’s almost impossible to determine to what extent Arkansans are benefiting from the business side of medical cannabis.

The state tells us that some clarity should be provided in May, though it’s likely the ownership picture, which is supposed to be public information, will remain murky. At this point, perhaps the best we can hope for is a greater emphasis on transparency.