Melson files medical marijuana license fix bill
By MARY SELL and ALEXANDER WILLIS, Alabama Daily News
MONTGOMERY, Ala. – State Sen. Tim Melson, R-Florence, is sponsoring a bill that will take some of the long-stalled medical marijuana licensing authority away from a state commission created and tasked with the job in 2022 and give it to a private entity.
“It’s just taking too long,” Melson told Alabama Daily News about the awarding of coveted integrated facility licenses that are key to getting patients access to medical marijuana products in the state. The process that started with applications in late 2022 has been riddled with errors, lawsuits and three rounds of license selection. It’s still held up in court in Montgomery.
“You had one job, you haven’t been able to perform it, so let’s just go ahead and find somebody who can,” Melson said Tuesday afternoon outside the Senate chambers.
Alabama lawmakers first legalized the limited use of medical marijuana back in 2021, and the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission first attempted to issue licenses to grow and sell products in early 2023. The rollout of licenses, however, was plagued with scoring inconsistencies and transparency concerns, leading to several companies denied a license filing lawsuits against the state, litigation that continues to stall the process to this day.
Of the five categories of licenses to grow and sell medical marijuana, the integrated facilities and dispensary licenses – the only two licenses that permit the actual sale of medical marijuana – were the most contested, and the source of the litigation against the state.
According to a draft of the bill, the existing commission would have until Oct. 1 to hire a nationally recognized consultant “with expertise in financial auditing and managerial consulting” with offices in at least 15 states.
And only applicants from the original Dec. 31, 2022, application deadline will be considered for the licenses.
Melson on Tuesday said he realizes the licenses are lucrative, but that wasn’t the point of the 2021 law.
“I don’t care who gets it,” he said. “I really don’t. I just want it to be implemented in a competent manner.
“Patients are still suffering.”
John McMillan, director of the cannabis commission, told ADN he wasn’t aware of the bill until it was filed on Tuesday. He and commission members are reviewing it, but he said at first glance he is not opposed to it.
“The commission is focused on getting licenses out, getting this program up and going and getting patients medication,” McMillan said. “There’s only two ways to do that right now, the courts or the Legislature, the way I see it.”
The law allows for the use of some medical marijuana products with a physician’s approval for specific ailments and diseases.
Some efforts were made in 2024 to restart the state’s rollout of medical marijuana, with Melson filing such a bill last spring, though it failed to advance beyond a Senate committee.
Sam Blakemore, a member of the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission, the state entity established to facilitate the state’s rollout of medical marijuana, told ADN last month that litigation against the state regarding the medical marijuana licenses may be resolved soon, saying mid-January that a resolution could come in a matter of weeks.
Melson’s new legislation also changes the number of integrated facility licenses allowed from five to seven. That’s because the state’s population has increased based on the census information since the 2021 law was enacted.