It’s not often that one gets a do-over, but in essence that’s exactly what the state officials overseeing Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana program have coming later this year, when they will award a second round of permits for the program.

Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana program is off to an uneven start. It’s tremendously popular with patients, but has struggled with supply-side issues as well as transparency.

The second round of permits is a chance to make a difference on both those counts.

The program absolutely must be expanded to keep pace with demand. Nearly 500 doctors have been certified to prescribe the drug to patients, and more than 25,000 people have registered for the program. More than 7,000 people have purchased medical marijuana cards and more than 6,000 people have purchased a medical marijuana product at one of the state’s 27 dispensaries.

So far in 2018 the storyline for medical marijuana in Pennsylvania — other than its launch in February, when dispensaries were allowed to begin selling to patients — has been shortages.

Less than two weeks after the program launched, reports emerged that some dispensaries were struggling with either extremely limited inventory. One dispensary, in Chester County, shut down temporarily because of bare shelves.

The rush on processed marijuana products in Butler has been just as frenetic.

We noted in mid-March that the CY+ dispensary on Pillow Street was serving 50 to 60 patients per day. The 10 doctors in Butler County who are certified to prescribe medical marijuana has also been busy. One said in March that he was seeing 25 to 30 patients per day seeking certification to obtain the drug.

The evidence that Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana program needs to be expanded is clear. But how that is done matters just as much as the expansion itself. And the new round of permit reviews is a chance for state officials to prove they’ve learned something.

When the first round of grower-processor applications were unveiled last June, it quickly became apparent that the vetting and approval process was dysfunctional.

State officials refused to name the people charged with scoring the applications, and when the applications were released, many were so heavily-redacted — in some cases by the applicants themselves — that they were virtually useless to the public.

The blowback against these issues has been satisfying, but hasn’t produced results — yet.

In January the state Office of Open Records (OOR) issued a ruling rebuking the state for its handling of the released applications, and ordering officials to provide keystone information — like the names of owners and financial backers — that had been redacted from many of the 177 released applications in the first round.

The OOR also slapped state officials with a separate ruling last September ordering them to unmask the panelists charged with vetting and scoring the grower-processor applications.

The OOR’s rulings don’t carry the same weight as a judge’s orders, but state officials would be well-advised to comply. And with the second round of permits to be issued this summer, it’s a perfect time to show off a new and improved process that better-serves the public.

There’s no excuse for the second round of permits to fall victim to the same mistakes that plagued the state’s initial rollout of this program.