Costly Delays: How much has Alabama Cannabis Commission spent while patients wait for products?

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) - The Alabama Cannabis Commission has spent $7.396 million of your tax dollars since Fiscal Year 2022, with $1.05 million of that going towards legal expenses, according to a WBRC 6 News On Your Side Investigates analysis of the state’s expenditures.

When the state passed its medical marijuana law in 2021, forming the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC), the goal was to issue licenses in June 2023, and hopefully have products in qualifying patients hands before the end of the year.

But after the commission tried but failed three times to issue licenses and admitted mistakes in its process, and the commission’s first chairman resigned, controversy and lawsuits followed, and even the most optimistic timeline now doesn’t project patients having access to medical marijuana products until early 2025.

“Has the commission been getting paid for doing nothing, basically? Why don’t they give their money back?” That’s what a woman we’ll call “Cindy” wants to know. She wants to remain anonymous, but shared her experience as a caregiver for her husband who was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in 2018 that spread to his brain, spine, and liver. “Cindy” says he quickly became addicted to opioid pain pills, but found relief through medical cannabis products.

“Somebody brought us some medical marijuana pills, just 10 mg, and he’s like ‘Oh my God, I take one of these and I’m good all day,” Cindy related. “He didn’t hurt, it just worked.”

Cindy says she wants to see that same relief available to cancer patients who are in the midst of their fight.

“It’s hard to watch people suffer so needlessly when we can do something simple to make it better,” Cindy said. “I think every person that’s holding this up or saying we don’t need this? Needs to go sit a day in that clinic and the one on the other side of town and look at those patients. And look at those caregivers bringing those patients in. It is depressing, it is demoralizing to see people suffer like that.”

Cindy says she’s run out of patience with the AMCC’s delays.

“Those people are suffering enough, their families are suffering enough, it’s just ridiculous,” Cindy claims. They don’t deserve to get paid if they didn’t have the brains in the beginning to go look at another state, see what worked, see what didn’t work, bam - we have a plan in 6 months, let’s go issue licenses.”

We reached out to the AMCC for a statement, and Brittany Peters, the AMCC’s Communications Director said:

“There are necessary costs associated with the administration of any State agency. In addition, there are significant costs associated with the creation and launch of a new agency such as AMCC.

AMCC’s responsibility to Alabama taxpayers is one motivation behind its approach to expenditures - to execute on the mandates of the Alabama Legislature measured against current progress of program implementation.

As of today, medical cannabis business licenses are issued to 18 entities, each of which is operating within the regulatory framework developed and implemented by AMCC.

Unfortunately, full program implementation in Alabama has been impeded by litigation. Nearly every state that has implemented a medical cannabis program has experienced delaying litigation and, in many cases, the same plaintiffs are now in Alabama. The cost of litigation in Alabama – less than 15% of AMCC’s total expenditures – is roughly equal to the amount of non-taxpayer revenue received from entities that have sought business licenses in Alabama.”

The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals rejected an appeal by the AMCC last Friday to dismiss a lawsuit by Jemmstone Alabama, LLC that claims the AMCC improperly denied its license application. That decision will send this lawsuit to join others in the Montgomery Circuit Court’s jurisdiction, where Judge Anderson has assigned retired Montgomery County Circuit Judge Eugene Reese as a mediator to try and push the AMCC and the multiple plaintiffs suing the commission towards a resolution that can jumpstart the issuing of licenses in the integrated category.

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