'Not at all' AL Medical Cannabis Commission says licenses have not been promised to anyone
Some local Alabama municipalities are working to make it possible for medical cannabis to be grown and sold in their area.
The Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission will accept requests for licenses such as licenses to cultivate, transport, and sale medical cannabis on September 1st.
Commission Director John McMillan said regardless of what people may be hearing, the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission has not pre-selected or promised licenses to anyone.
“Not at all and I’m grateful to you for asking that question because pretty often we hear the rumors about somebody telling somebody else 'oh they’ve got their licenses' and all that and I can assure everybody that is not the case at all. We don’t even know for sure exactly how we're gonna evaluate the license applications so there’s certainly been no decisions made as to who’s gonna get them," said McMillian.
The state expects there to be a lot of interest in each of these licenses particularly in the retail licenses which are capped by the state at 37 locations.
"We don’t dictate to them where they go but we certainly will be interested in tracking where they wanna put them as part of the application," said McMillian.
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He added, "not that, that will determine it. We wanna know because the cities and counties will be involved in it and will also concerned about access to the medical cannabis for the patients, we have underserved parts of the state.”
Only a certain number of licenses will be available and that's a concern for the Alabama Cannabis Coalition.
Part of their mission is to help Alabamians fight for their right to grow and sell cannabis.
They believe the state is moving in the right direction and as fast as they can right now but more dispensaries are needed to serve more Alabamians.
Founder and President H Marty Schelper said, "people are dying, sick, suffering and dying everyday that needed access to this 10 years ago. So is it moving fast enough not for somebody who’s terminally ill but I do believe that the commission is moving as fast and as rapidly as they possibly can.”
McMillan believes the legislature, who sets the number of dispensaries, will have to extend the State's dispensary count at some point in the future.
You can read more about the different type of licenses below:
