State of medical cannabis in Alabama

February 3, 2025 - On May 17, 2021, the State of Alabama approved a medical cannabis bill that would allow patients with a qualified illness, upon recommendation from their doctor, receive medical cannabis. After a lengthy rule writing procedure, and an even lengthier application process, the State finally awarded cannabis licenses to dozens of qualified candidates. Then things went completely off the rails.

Two and a half years later, the Alabama cannabis industry is mired in litigation. Not so small fortunes have already been spent on sound and some not so sound legal advice from dozens of attorneys.

While 36 states were able to pass a program that allowed for medical cannabis patients to acquire medical cannabis it simply has become a legal morass for all involved in the State of Alabama.

Today the Alabama Legislature gavels in for the 2025 Legislative Session. All eyes are fixed on the Legislature to come up with some sort of a solution to this legal profession created quagmire.

One solution, which I presented last year, was to give everyone qualified a license. This free-market strategy would expose the groups that lack the capital or do not know what they are doing to competition and their doomed business models would inevitably fail leaving only the best run, best capitalized to make it in the industry.

The chairman of the Senate committee that prepares the general fund budget has publicly suggested to the media that the state could repeal the entire cannabis bill, because the state is spending millions of dollars defending the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission in litigation which the plaintiffs have clearly designed to keep this in courts until they get their way.

The Alabama Judicial System does not have the authority to give away cannabis licenses above and beyond the limits set in the original 2021 legislation. Neither have the courts been willing to dismiss plaintiffs' lawsuits as frivolous wastes of the court's time.

The sad fact is that this was carried over by the legislature last year in hopes that the court would resolve all of this and yet there has not been even the slightest glimmer of hope that the court is capable of ever resolving this,

How much longer is the Legislature going to allow this fleecing of all parties involved (including the state) by the state's legal community to go on?

The problem with simply repealing the whole act is that plaintiffs, as well as those applicants who were awarded licenses, will inevitably turn around and sue the state for breach of contract if the Legislature makes the mistake of repealing the act. A dozen groups were awarded marijuana grower licenses issued to them by the state. They have collectively invested millions of dollars growing medical cannabis that they can't legally sell because the court won't let the state issue dispensary licenses. Those folks are going to want to recoup their investments and will hold the state culpable in future litigation if the state pulls the rug out from under them. That litigation likely would also take years and millions of dollars thus the budget chairman's proposal would not solve the states cannabis problem.

A lot of the legal problems center around the original legislation. This is the most restricted bill in the nation and thus far it has not withstood legal review and yet another round of court ordered mediation does not appear to be any more productive than previous rounds of mediation were. The biggest beneficiaries from this has been all the overpriced law firms involved as they continue to rack up the billable hours.

The Alabama Board of Medical Examiners has not been able to issue the first license to certify patients. This is 2025, and we are still trying to implement legislation that we passed four years old. A child born in the 2021 session is not only up and walking by now, but his parents are already preparing him or her to start pre-K classes. The Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission is about to turn four years old and hasn't walked a step yet. It is past time for an intervention.

The Compassion Act can be amended to include more licenses. There is no reason why we cannot get this done. We just need to find a Senator that will sponsor the bill. Senator Tim Melson (R-Florence) did a great job in pushing for the bill in 2021, but his original bill was heavily modified in the House of Representatives. We worried then is some of those compromises we were forced to accept were actually poison pills that would haunt the Alabama medical cannabis industry moving forward. The last two and a half years of legal chaos has confirmed the worst of our fears about the bill as passed in 2021. It is time for the Legislature to step up and fix a mess that they helped create four years ago.

Four years ago some legislators opposed the legislation on the grounds that passing the Compassion Act would lead to an explosion in cannabis use across the state. I was asked a question today by a powerful legislator today, "why, would someone want medical cannabis, when you can visit a gas station and get it legally"

Exactly something I warned about four years ago. The sale of cannabinoids across Alabama has grown exponentially; but it is not controlled, lab tested, doctor recommended medical marijuana – that is still illegal in Alabama until the court, or the Legislature acts to enforce the Compassion Act. Instead, people are selling all manner of cannabinoids by distilling Delta 8 and Delta 10 out of legal CBD oil and then selling that product wrapped up in gummies, smokable products, candies, lotions, tinctures, pills, and more.

Delta 8 typically has 25% of the potency of its (still illegal in Alabama) Delta 9 cousin. In actual practice that unregulated product as sold on the shelf can vary wildly in its actual potency and chemical composition making much of it virtually useless for the medical consumer who needs verifiable dosages to treat their symptoms without becoming either impaired or receiving too little THC to alleviate any of their symptoms.

Lost in all of this debate are the patients. Does anybody remember the patients?... Do you remember the child that was having a violent seizure and after administering medical cannabis the child stopped seizing? Of course, you do. It's been the hallmark of getting the Compassion Act, passed in the first place – not making a bunch of the state's wealthy even wealthier. Or, what about the patients that are in serious pain that either live in agonizing pain or resort to taking legal and/or illegal addictive pain medicines? A million Americans have died in the last ten years from drug overdoses. Whether it was from illegal substances like fentanyl and heroin or hydrocodone, OxyContin, and morphine that unscrupulous doctors overprescribed, hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from drug overdoses in the last decade. Why is Alabama still not allowing cancer patients and other people with a doctor diagnosed need from receiving a non-addictive non-opiate based pain reliever recommended by their doctor? This made no sense four years ago and is even less sense given the suffering that opiates have inflicted on our culture – too often inflicted by the pharmaceutical companies who made out like bandits inventing new ways to get people hooked to their products.

We need the public 's help on this.

What can you do? Get involved. Quit complaining about a government issue when you are not even registered to vote. Get to know your city and county elected officials. Get to know your State Senators and your State Representatives. Call your U.S Senators Tommy Tuberville and U.S. Senator Katie Britt. There is a lot that can be done federally. Most importantly, talk to your state legislators and urge them to find an Alabama solution to and Alabama problem and get this fixed.

Chey Garrigan is a lobbyist, realtor, and the founder and President of the Alabama Cannabis Industry Association. She is a native of St. Clair County.

Opinions expressed in the Alabama Gazette are the opinions and viewpoints of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Alabama Gazette staff, advertisers, and/ publishers