Alabama’s medical marijuana program remains stalled three years since its creation, amid ongoing legal battles over business licenses.
The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals issued two rulings last week that could reshape the dispute, according to local media reports.
One decision ordered the dismissal of a consolidated “master” case against the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC), citing sovereign immunity.
However, a second ruling allowed a lawsuit by Alabama Always, a company denied an integrated license, to proceed.
William Somerville, attorney for Alabama Always, said the company will now seek discovery to examine the AMCC’s decision-making process.
“We will be able to now ask for discovery – where we can determine exactly how this commission has operated – and bring everything out in the open,” Somerville told AL.com.
The AMCC has so far issued licenses for cultivators, processors, transporters, and a testing lab. However, integrated company and dispensary licenses remain on hold due to litigation.
The commission can issue only five integrated licenses, which allow companies to go vertical, despite receiving more than 30 applications.
Somerville criticized the commission’s “somewhat secretive” scoring system, telling WPMI-TV, “Nobody knows, I don’t even think the commissioners know why certain people were granted licenses and other people weren’t.”
“There’s no written explanation of it,” he added. “There’s no indication that any of the required statutes were complied with.”
The court dismissed the original master case due to a technical flaw: it didn’t name individual commissioners as defendants, only the agency. Alabama Always had already recognized the issue in its original case and moved to dismiss it in April, as it filed the new suit.
“The two decisions issued today…highlight the procedural complexities of the litigation against the Commission over the past year,” the AMCC said in a statement after the Friday ruling. “The AMCC legal team will continue to defend the Commission’s actions in carrying out its statutory duties.”
The state’s medical cannabis law, approved by lawmakers in 2021, allows for the use of medical marijuana for specific qualifying conditions, including chronic pain, epilepsy, cancer, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
However, Alabama’s program is more restrictive than many other states. The law limits THC content to 75 milligrams per dose, with a daily maximum of 50 milligrams for most patients. It also prohibits smoking or vaping of cannabis products, limiting consumption to oral tablets, capsules, tinctures, topicals, and other non-smokable forms.
The April filing:
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