Buying or selling a cannabis business in Orlando, Florida

The visitor market does not exist

Section 381.986 limits the registry to Florida residents. Seasonal residents also qualify if they live in the state at least 31 consecutive days a year. A dispensary near International Drive does not sell to the people staying on International Drive. Its catchment is Central Florida patients plus a large seasonal population, which produces a winter skew worth checking. With adult use dead for 2026, that will not change soon. The licence structure is on the Florida page.

State law lets a city or county ban dispensing facilities. One that allows them may not cap their number or regulate them more strictly than pharmacies. Orlando and Orange County both allow them, and their rules could hardly be more different.

What the City of Orlando requires

Orlando’s rules are in Chapter 58, Part 4R(2), adopted as Ordinance 2017-25 on 5 June 2017. Amendments followed in 2020 and 2024.

Zoning use (58.873). A dispensary is classed as light retailing, so it goes wherever the city’s use tables allow that use. In the Southeast Orlando Sector Plan area it follows the Village Center standards. A dispensary not approved by the Florida Department of Health is prohibited.

Separation (58.874). A dispensary may not be within:

Distance	From
200 feet	A residential zoning district, or a residential land use in the Southeast Orlando Sector Plan area
1,000 feet	A school, park, religious institution, child day care centre, or treatment and recovery facility
5,280 feet	Another medical marijuana dispensary

Distances are the shortest straight line between property or district boundaries. The one-mile spacing and the 200-foot residential buffer also count dispensaries and residential zoning in unincorporated Orange County and neighbouring cities. A dispensary that is an accessory use to a hospital with at least 100 beds is exempt from the table.

Operations (58.875). No dispensing between 7 p.m. and 8 a.m., which is stricter than the state’s 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. window. No drive-throughs. The security plan approved by the Department of Health must be filed with the police chief before opening. A planning official determination must approve the site’s zoning, parking, circulation, signage and appearance before a certificate of occupancy.

These rules came in just before the legislature added the pharmacy-parity rule in 2017. Planners had proposed a one-mile spacing and 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. hours in April that year. Whether each provision would survive a pharmacy-parity challenge is a legal question. The code as published in 2026 still contains them, and the city amended the operational section as recently as 2024.

What unincorporated Orange County requires

The county went the other way. Ordinance 2017-21, of 14 November 2017, added a dispensing facility to the chapter 38 use table as a permitted use, subject to condition 179. It is allowed in exactly the districts where drug stores and pharmacies are: C-1, C-2, C-3, I-1/I-5, I-2/I-3, I-4, NC and NAC. Cultivation is permitted in A-1 and A-2, and processing in I-2/I-3 and I-4.

Condition 179 requires a valid state licence and a building or use permit. It sets a 500-foot buffer from any school property, measured property line to property line, even when the school is inside a city. The facility may sell only medical marijuana and delivery devices. No paraphernalia, alcohol or other cannabis is allowed, and recreational dispensing is prohibited. The Zoning Division’s MMTC application form, dated August 2018, listed a $273 fee and up to 30 days’ review. Approval was valid for six months.

What this means for a deal

1. Establish the jurisdiction from the parcel. A site that fails Orlando’s one-mile test may pass in unincorporated Orange County a few blocks away.
2. Value the spacing. Inside the city, the one-mile rule protects an existing store from a new competitor next door. Check what lies within 5,280 feet, including across the city line.
3. Model shorter hours. An Orlando store loses two evening hours that a county store keeps.

See zoning, buffers and conditional use permits and local control and municipal approvals.

What can actually change hands

Property and leases, including industrial space in the county’s I-2/I-3 and I-4 districts for processing; see cannabis real estate basics. Ancillary businesses; see ancillary cannabis businesses. Or a whole MMTC. Florida had 779 dispensing locations in early September 2026 and issued 22 new licences on 11 September 2026, which adds competition for the same resident patients.

Verify volumes against the Office of Medical Marijuana Use’s weekly reports. This is general information, not legal advice. To talk through an Orlando deal in confidence, book an intro call.