“We will reevaluate and go through the investigation process to see where we stand. Don’t worry if you haven’t received your license yet. There may be another chance .”
By Alander Rocha, Alabama Reflector
The Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission re-awarded licenses to produce and distribute medical cannabis on Thursday after questions regarding the evaluation of the applications had stopped the process back in June.
The commission has granted licenses for medical cannabis to companies that were previously awarded licenses. Rex Vaughn was elected chair of the commission Thursday. He told the denied applicants that they may be “willing” to reconsider new applications once the commission “sees where [they] stand with their current licenses.”
He said, “We’ll reevaluate and go through the investigation process to see where we stand.” Don’t worry if you haven’t received your license yet. There may be a second day.
All previous winners except Verano, based in Chicago, were granted licenses by the commission. The commission didn’t discuss the reasons for Verano’s denial. The number of cultivator licences awarded by the members was also increased from four to seven.
The commission may award up to twelve licenses, including four for processing cannabis and four for dispensing the product.
The commissioner may also grant up to five licenses to integrated facilities that cultivate, process, and distribute medical marijuana.
The licenses were awarded after a two-month hiatus due to questions raised about the transparency in scoring applications. The commission put a stop to the awarding of licenses less than a week following the announcement. It cited “scoring inconsistencies”, which would have resulted in “catastrophic results” if licenses had been issued.
The University of South Alabama hired evaluators to review the initial license application.
Human errors
The University of South Alabama Vice President for Research and Economic Development, Lynne Chronister and Kristen Roberts the University’s Financial Officer addressed the Commission on Thursday. They said that the process is riddled by human error.
Chronister & Roberts claim that an evaluator double-entered a score in a facility integration application. This led to incorrect scores for applications below the duplicate score.
Roberts said that when he was summing up and averaging the scores of applicants, he picked up two wrong numbers.
Officials also stated that there were errors in data entry as well as incorrectly applying weights to scores, incorrectly averaging the scores of evaluators and a mismatch with the score USA evaluators scored written assessments.
KPMG independently verified that these variances have all been corrected by University of South Alabama. Roberts stated that the data set provided to the Commission was of the highest quality.
The commission tried to be transparent during the hearing. William Webster presented the agenda for the executive session and explained the selection process of the companies to be nominated for the vote.
He told each member of the commission to nominate companies in each category unanimously. Only those companies that were nominated would be eligible to vote at the public meeting.
Vaughn stated that “the rules are clear” that “the commission remains the primary decider” when it comes to awarding licenses. The commission also has “authority and authority to act independently from any third party evaluation or their recommendation.”
Vaughn stated that “this means the commission can act in accordance with such an evaluation and recommendations”.
Vaughn stated that the commission members had received the recalculated score over a week prior and they were able to ask and discuss sensitive questions in the executive sessions.
He said, “Which are not for public consumption but relate to the professional service provided by the University of South Alabama.”
The Program
Alabama’s state legislature approved a medical marijuana program in 2021. However, the legislation authorizing the program didn’t allow for licenses to be granted until September 1, 2020. AMCC started accepting applications in late 2018.
Patients certified by participating doctors will be able use medical cannabis to treat 15 conditions including cancer, chronic back pain, depression, and Parkinson’s Disease once the product becomes available. Patients must apply for a medical cannabis card in order to purchase it from licensed distributors.
The law prohibits the consumption of medical cannabis in food or as a smoked product. The products will come in the form of tablets, capsules or gelatins. They can also be found as oils, creams or gels. Cannabis gummies can only be peach-flavored.
38 entities applied for licenses to operate integrated facilities. Twelve more applicants competed for 12 cultivator licences. Twelve more applicants applied for the remaining four processor licenses. Meanwhile, 18 others applied for the four dispensary licences.
Unknown numbers of testing and transport licenses are available. 11 transport license applications and 3 testing license applications have been received by the commission.
The commission has awarded the same licenses to Alabama Secure Transport, LLC, in Montgomery, International Communications, LLC, in Birmingham, and Tyler Van Lines, LLC, in Troy, as it did back in June.
Certus Laboratories, located in Grand Bay, Mobile, was the sole firm selected to receive a testing licence in June.
Insa Alabama is the only integrated facility to have received a license on Thursday, after not receiving one in June.
I AM FARMS and Greenway Botanicals, as well as CRC of Alabama were added to previous license winners who received three new licenses.
The license fee will be invoiced to the company and they have 14 days in which to pay it. Denials of a license also have 14 days in which to request an investigation.
Observers of the process had some questions. Chey Garrigan of the Alabama Medical Cannabis Association said that they seem to be trying to address issues but that this only raises further questions.
Why did you say no? Why did you abstain from voting? Who nominated who? “That just raised a whole lot of questions,” said the woman.
The story was originally published by Alabama Reflector.
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The article Alabama Officials re-award medical marijuana business licenses first appeared on Marijuana Moment.
