Alabama's Medical Cannabis Commission divided

MONTGOMERY, Ala. —

The program has been years in the making. But right now, medical marijuana licenses in Alabama are on hold. A judge issued that order last month, leaving cannabis companies in the lurch. The commission met again in Montgomery Monday.

A lawsuit initially started by two companies that applied for medical marijuana licenses, but were denied, is now growing. The issue is what they call a flawed process to select which companies would be able to sell and distribute the cannabis. A judge's decision last month came right after the state's medical marijuana commission put that hold on the licenses that were announced a few days prior. Now they are backtracking, meaning the licenses will not be given out until the issue regarding the scoring data is resolved.

Right now, the commission is waiting for another independent agency to review their choices and the analysis from the anonymous experts at the University of South Alabama to identify any tabulation errors. But some of the commissioners expressed concern about the fact that they didn't know the background of those so-called experts and weren’t privy to how those experts were grading each company applying for a license.

Loree Skelton is a lawyer and a member of the commission.

“The information that we were given gave us no criteria whatsoever as to where the numbers came from. We saw no analysis; we saw no summaries,” Skelton said.

Commission Chairman, Dr. Steve Stokes, took full responsibility for that.

“We wanted to try to get some independent evaluators to make recommendations to the board. And these are not high school kids. These are college professors. These are retired businesspeople. And we did keep it anonymous because we didn't want them to be pressured into voting for one person or the other,” Stokes said.

As far as the cannabis companies filing suit against the board. Stokes had little sympathy.

“Everybody who's involved in this thinks there's going to be a lot of money to be made in this. So, let's don't feel sorry for the people about not getting as much money as they think they're going to get…. let's feel sorry for the patients, not for these people that are very wealthy. When it's all over, they're not going to miss a meal,” he said.

Officials had hoped to have medical cannabis available by the end of the year or the beginning of 2024. Now that timeline has likely been pushed back. Sales are likely to begin sometime next year; however, ongoing litigation could push that back even further.