Alabama Senate moves to restart medical cannabis licensing

An Alabama Senate committee on Wednesday approved a pair of bills designed to revive the state’s stalled medical cannabis licensing process.

The Senate Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry committee gave the green light to SB 306, which would restart the licensing process and potentially strip some powers from the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC), the Alabama Reflector reported.

Under the bill, the Alabama Securities Commission would be responsible for verifying and evaluating applications before forwarding them to the AMCC for final selection.

During debate, a Greensboro Democrat and Senate Minority Leader, Bobby Singleton, even suggested that the Alabama Securities Commission, rather than the AMCC, should handle the licensing process due to inconsistencies in the AMCC’s scoring of applications, according the outlet.

“They looked at the same application three different times and gave not a consistent score, but totally inconsistent scores, and I think once you put it back in the hands of that commission, again, I’m afraid that some of those same things are going to happen,” Singleton said.

He also said that the commission should lean on outside consultants to help with the process, . Some have questioned whether the AMCC has the expertise and resources to effectively manage the licensing process.

The committee also approved another bill, SB 276, which would require the AMCC to issue 10 licenses for integrated facilities that can grow, process, and distribute medical cannabis.

The measure would also raise the maximum number of dispensary licenses from four to seven and processor licenses from four to six. Additionally, it would ban the transfer of licenses and void licenses if a company is found to be no longer eligible.

The bills aim to redistribute some responsibilities to other agencies and finally mend issues that have bogged down the implementation of the program, which was established in 2021 to allow patients with certain medical conditions to use medical cannabis in various forms, excluding smoking and edibles.