Medical Marijuana hearings to start Monday
Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission Set to Move Forward with Licensing Process After Settlement.
On Monday, the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC) is expected to vote to ratify an agreement with plaintiffs’ attorneys to allow the AMCC to move forward with its timeline to make new cannabis license awards in December.
Chey Garrigan is the founder and President of the Alabama Cannabis Industry Association (ACIA).
“We are excited about the news that a settlement may have been reached in the ongoing litigation,” Garrigan told Alabama Today. “Our focus has always been on alleviating the suffering of the people of Alabama with conditions that are treatable by medical cannabis.”
Attorneys for the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC) have reached a settlement with plaintiffs that would allow the AMCC to begin hearing presentations from applicants starting Monday.
Two major sticking points were addressed in the recent closed-door negotiations between all the attorneys.
The first issue was the ten-megabyte limit on marijuana application size. The AMCC provided flexibility to help applicants work around the limit – but that information was not distributed, so some applicants submitted applications that were far smaller than what they would have preferred – or did not apply at all because they could not figure out how to downsize their application to ten megabytes without leaving out vital information. In the agreement, there is no limit on the application sizes.
The second is the scoring. Independent application evaluators hired by the University of South Alabama graded the applications, assigning them a numerical score and ranking them from first to worst based on the scoring. Those highest-scoring applicants received the awards in the first round of license awards. Failed applicants criticized the accuracy of those scores. The Commissioners, in the agreement, have been ordered not to consider those scores when they consider the applications when they vote on who gets the awards.
In exchange for agreeing to those two final points, the lawsuits will be dismissed, and the Commission can move forward with the application presentations. The previous two rounds of applicant awards have all been vacated by the AMCC.
Assuming that all goes well with the first part of the meeting, the Commission ratifies the agreement, and no new restraining order is in place, the Commission will then hear presentations from applicants for licenses to cultivate, process, transport, dispense, and operate as the official cannabis laboratory that week.
On Monday, the Commission is expected to hear presentations from cultivator and state testing laboratory applicants. On Tuesday, the Commission will hear presentations from the secure transporter and processor applicants. On Wednesday, the Commission will listen to presentations from the dispensary Applicants.
According to our current understanding of the process, the Commission will meet on December 1 to make those awards.
Next week, the Commission will meet to consider applications from the thirty applicants vying for the integrated facility license. The integrator license allows a business entity to grow, process, transport, and dispense medical cannabis. The Commission can give a maximum of five integrated licenses – thirty applications for vertically integrated licenses were turned in.
The Commission will meet on December 12 to award licenses to the integrators.
Each applicant will be given about 45 minutes to present to the Commission, and the presentation can include videos. Licenses, if all goes well, could be issued before Christmas.
“We wish luck to all of the applicants and look forward to working with the new licensees,” Garrigan said.
AMCC Executive Director John McMillan has said that he hopes that Alabamians will be able to purchase Alabama-grown medical cannabis products as early as March.
“Our first priority needs to be serving those Alabamians diagnosed with a legitimate medical need,” Garrigan said.
