Once again, the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC), arguably the state's most inept governmental board, has taken it on the chin from an Alabama court, this time the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals.
The Court's November 15th ruling denied an attempt by the AMCC to dismiss a lawsuit filed by an applicant for an integrated facility license that alleges incompetent management and arbitrary selection of applicants.
The plaintiff this time was Jemmstone Alabama, LLC, which sued the commission a year ago after the commission's latest decision on which five of 28 applicants would receive integrated facility licenses, considered the Holy Grail of all the various licenses available in Alabama.
Among those 28 applicants was Natural Relief Cultivation, LLC, a company wanting to make more than a $25 million investment in the City of Russellville if it had received a license.
In 2021, the Alabama Legislature passed the Darren Wesley 'Ato' Hall Compassion Act, legalizing medical cannabis for those who meet one of 15 qualifying medical conditions.
The law created the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission as the entity to oversee the process of licensing, registering and regulating the state's medical cannabis rollout.
There have been three attempts by the AMCC to issue licenses, each having been successfully challenged in the state's court system. The pending civil suit results from the commission's December 2023 award of the five integrated facility licenses.
Natural Relief Cultivation, LLC, was denied a license in each of those three attempts by the commission.
The company, owned by Arkansas businessman Brian Faught, would inject a massive economic splash for Russellville. Natural Relief Cultivation has an agreement with the city to purchase 28 acres on Alabama 24 if it receives a license. The company would construct a cultivation and processing facility in Russellville and would open a dispensary in Russellville, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Owens Cross Roads and Gadsden.
The commission's first two licensing rounds were invalidated due to what were described as 'scoring inconsistencies' in round one and legal filings alleging illegal secret meetings and conflicts of interest of AMCC members in rounds two and three.
A Circuit Court in Montgomery has entered a temporary restraining order to allow the AMCC and the denied license applicants to agree on a proposal to allow investigative hearings to move forward.
Jemmstone's claims of mismanagement and improper denial of licenses will now move forward and that could include taking depositions of commission members, compelling them to provide sworn statements about AMCC's selection process.
It's another blow for an appointed commission that hasn't done what it was created to do in more than three years.
If medical cannabis actually starts being dispensed in Alabama, it would be available to patients who obtain a medical cannabis card from a licensed dispenser. That would require the patient to have a letter from a physician certifying his or her qualifying condition.
Medical cannabis would be distributed in non-food forms like tablets, creams, oils, transdermal patches and gummies.
The failed rollout of Alabama's medical cannabis law comes as no surprise to one of its harshest legislative critics, Sen. Larry Stutts.
“You have a few people selecting a few applicants and to get selected is worth millions of dollars. That opens up the floodgates for corruption,” Stutts told the FFP earlier this year.
