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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) – Alabama’s Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC) won a partial court victory Friday, even as an attorney who helped author the Alabama Administrative Procedures Act (AAPA) is accusing the Commission of violating the law that’s been on the books since 1981.
“The Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (”Commission”) has from the start ignored the letter, spirit and intent of the AAPA,” says Jack Mooresmith, an attorney who helped author the AAPA and who’s been retained as an expert on the AAPA by a law firm representing a medical cannabis company who was denied a license by the AMCC.
“The Commission created rules that in essence allowed it to determine who would and would not be licensed in a totally arbitrary and secretive manner with no semblance of fairness to the applicants,” Mooresmith tells WBRC. “The legally unexplainable actions of the Commission in ignoring the AAPA and arbitrarily awarding some licenses and denying others has denied Alabama citizens the ability to have the drugs they should already have access to. If the Commission had simply followed the AAPA as it was supposed to do and legally obligated to do, medical cannabis would already be available to the patients who need it.”
The AMCC faces multiple lawsuits from companies who’ve applied for integrated licenses to grow, transport, and sell medical marijuana, but either been denied, or first granted a license only to have it later rescinded in a process that’s now more than a year behind schedule after multiple controversies involving the AMCC’s evaluation process.
“In my personal opinion, this is clearly intentional,” Mooresmith argues. “The Commission has been represented by legal counsel from the beginning. Their rules were clearly drafted to totally avoid the requirements of due process of law in hearings at the outset of the licensure process, and to allow the Commission unfettered discretion contrary to the AAPA. The question should be why did they want unfettered discretion to secretly award the only five integrated facility licenses authorized by the law? I have no answer to that since there is no record of what was discussed by the Commission members in private which also violated the Alabama Open Meetings Act.”
While Mooresmith argues the decision on who should be licensed should be taken out of the AMCC’s hands, the Commission’s Communications Director tells WBRC: “His allegations are a refashioned version of the unproven allegations levied by those who have used litigation to stop the licensure process and deny medical cannabis to Alabama patients,” said Brittany Peters, Communications Director for the AMCC. “The legal tangle created by disappointed applicants is gradually being untangled by the courts, including decisions today by the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals. The Court’s reasoning is consistent with the arguments made by AMCC and its decisions today may have implications for other cases and issues, which could move Alabama even closer to seeing patients benefit from access to medical cannabis. However, we respect the Court’s deliberative attention, and we won’t rush to judgment on matters that are clearly still under review by the Court.”
The AMCC did win a partial victory in court Friday, when the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals granted the AMCC’s request to be removed as a defendant from several pending lawsuits, but denied the commission’s request to throw out a restraining order put in place by a Montgomery Circuit Judge that has essentially frozen the license-granting process for integrated licenses. That TRO in place also means patients in Alabama are still waiting for the chance to fill a prescription for medical marijuana, more than a year after the licenses were supposed to be issued.
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