Ala. medical cannabis applicant asking judge to throw out all cannabis Commission rules, start over

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) - One of the applicants denied a license by the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC) is now asking a Montgomery judge to throw out all of the rules and regulations the Commission created to govern the license application process, essentially forcing the Commission to go back to square one in the process of issuing licenses for the right to grow, ship, and sell medical marijuana in Alabama.

In an amended complaint filed in Montgomery Circuit Court late Friday afternoon, Aug. 25, Special Medical Products LLC alleges the Commission’s “implemented a grading system for grading license applicants, which has not been adopted as a rule as required by the Administrative Procedures Act.”

The new complaint goes on to say the Commission’s scoring system used by independent evaluators to grade the applicants violates the state’s Administrative Procedures Act and “the entire scoring system, then, cannot be used by the Commission to grant or deny a license.”

Specialty Medical Products is asking a judge overseeing multiple lawsuits related to the Commission’s so-far failed two attempts to grant licenses to declare all of the AMCC’s rules and grading system illegal and invalid, and declare void any action the AMCC took as a result of those rules and grades. That would essentially invalidate months of the AMCC’s work and two rounds of license-issuing, and send the entire process back to square one.

We reached out to the AMCC for a response and are waiting for a reply. These two sides are already scheduled to be in court Monday for a hearing on a temporary restraining order issued by a Montgomery judge, halting the AMCC from doing anything else while multiple applicants seek to prove the Commission violated the Open Meetings Act at its Aug. 10 meeting where it attempted to issue new licenses after having to void the first round it issued back in June after admitting to “tabulation errors” in the way the applications were scored.

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