Opinion | Without court action, Alabama is never getting medical marijuana

There was a moment on Wednesday, during yet another hearing on yet another motion covering mostly the same things that have been covered a bazillion times in the never-ending medical marijuana saga, that basically summed up the whole sorry, sad state of affairs. 

It came when an attorney for the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission, Mike Jackson, was arguing that the companies suing the Commission for not following state law were out of line because another state law says the Commission can’t be sued until the plaintiffs try to settle the dispute through the established hearing or grievance process. 

Jackson compared the issue of seeking to obtain a medical marijuana integrated license – and I’m going to paraphrase because I’m not being paid by the hour – with going to get a driver’s license. If you go and apply and take the tests and feel as if you’ve passed, he said, but you are denied a license, there is an appeals process that you can go through at that time. “It’s the same here,” he said. 

Except … no. 

Because in that scenario, there are unlimited licenses for anyone who can pass the test. In the medical marijuana scenario that is the focus of the lawsuits before the court, there are but five to be dished out to somewhere around 30 qualified companies. 

That’s what all of this is about at its core. The state of Alabama, by way of the Alabama Administrative Procedures Act, establishes a set of rules for state agencies to award licenses when there are multiple qualified applicants but a limited number of licenses. 

The AMCC did not follow those rules. And its attorneys apparently still do not know what the rules are or how they are applied. 

Yet, here we still sit, creeping up on four years since Gov. Kay Ivey signed this medical weed law into existence, and nary a drop, leaf or gummy has been doled out to suffering patients. 

Because of nonsense like the above. 

Honestly, it would be easier to take the fact that Mississippi has managed to figure out this issue before us if the legal arguments at the center of it all were at least compelling and smart. But they’re not. 

It’s literally this simple: 

1. The law says state agencies have to follow these rules.
2. The AMCC did not follow those rules. 

That’s it. There’s no 3. 

There’s even case law involving Circuit Court Judge James Anderson, who’s hearing this case, from the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals that addresses this issue. And it, too, makes it plain what should be happening here. 

The AMCC is required to hold open meetings in which licensing decisions can be challenged by all of the interested parties, who can all put on evidence and question witnesses. That process is required by the AAPA, and it does so because that process establishes a reviewable record that documents why a company was awarded a license, instead of this other qualified company, and that establishes a record that can withstand a court challenge. 

The AMCC’s processes, which it apparently plans to defend to the death, was to first create a super-secret formula for determining winners, go behind closed doors to pick them, and then reveal them like a carnival magician pulling handkerchiefs out of his pocket. When that was slapped down by the court, the next attempt involved a scoring system that seemed to be crafted by dudes who were chewing gummies and just spitballin’ ideas. 

But for certain, no one at the AMCC ever even wondered if there was a guide within state law that might lay out how to do this. 

When their obvious oversight of state law was pointed out, instead of agreeing to go back and amend its process to follow the law, the AMCC, at an expense of millions of taxpayer dollars, has decided to fight. Why on earth it wants to defend this lunacy instead of just fixing the procedure and awarding the licenses properly, so patients can get the help they need, I’ll never understand. 

But it quite clearly has no intention of doing so. So much so that at Wednesday’s hearing the Commission lawyers were joined by attorneys from one of the companies that was awarded a license during one of the flawed processes – quite the imagery from guys arguing that the appeals process being proposed by the AMCC would be fair. 

So, the court is going to have to force this. Judge Anderson is going to have to move this forward. He’s going to have to absorb the complaints and the challenges and the appeals and the whining, and he’s going to have to force a state agency to do what it should have been doing all along. 

This has gone on long enough.