Judge vacates 2023 cannabis license awards

April 22, 2025 - MONTGOMERY, AL. – Alabamians with a diagnosed medical need who were hoping to be able to legally purchase Alabama grown medical marijuana for their ailments received yet another setback on Tuesday when a Montgomery judge vacated the licenses that were awarded back in 2023.

The program, which has been mired in legal battles, appears farther away from becoming a reality than at any time since this all began.

It had appeared that the program would finally get back on track after the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals overturned the lower court's temporary restraining order blocking the program. Tuesday's order by Montgomery Circuit Judge James Anderson sends the entire program back to square one.

In 2021 the Alabama Legislature passed legislation creating the Alabama Cannabis Commission and tasking them with establishing a medical cannabis program in the state of Alabama. The Legislature ordered that the Commission license no more than five entities to be able to grow, process, transport, and market medical cannabis in the state.

That seemed rational and perfectly reasonable at the time; but reality set in when 36 business entities applied for the five coveted integrator licenses. This automatically meant that 31 of the 36 were doomed to walk away unhappy.

The Commission tasked the University of South Alabama with ranking the applicants – something that obviously South Alabama had never done before. In June 2023 the awards were made and predictably 31 of those applicants were upset that their application had been denied.

One of the 31 who were most unhappy was also one of the best funded – Alabama Always. They sued and more lawsuits by failed applicants followed. Eventually Judge Anderson consolidated most of those into one lawsuit.

The Commission flinched in the face of the legal onslaught and froze their own licenses and eventually did the process all over again in August of 2023. That did not satisfy anybody so at the urging of the court they vacated those licenses and the June licenses as well as the dubious U. of South Alabama scoring and did a new round of awards in December 2023. Alabama Always never received an award in any of the three rounds of awards – and they never gave up their legal fight. In fact, over a dozen plaintiffs – including some who won awards in rounds one and/or two, but not in three – have refused to retreat from their lawsuit challenging the entire process.

The Alabama Legislature – who created this whole situation by passing the "most restrictive medical cannabis law in the country" considered legislation in 2024 to attempt to fix the matter; but found itself divided on how to address this. To this point, nothing has changed in the Legislature. The Alabama Senate has a bill - sponsored by Senator Tim Melson (R-Florence) - but that bill appears unlikely to ever reach the Senate floor. That bill would have pushed the whole process back to some point in 2026; but would allow the Commission to issue more integrator licenses. There appears to be little appetite for addressing this in the Alabama House of Representatives even if that somehow got out of the logjam that is the current Alabama Senate in the remaining days of the session.

The Commission could appeal the lower court decision to the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals; or it could honor the ruling by Judge Anderson. That would mean vacating the licenses, resetting the awards process and proceeding with a fourth round of vertically integrator license awards. Whichever applicants (be they current awardees or plaintiffs) don't receive the five integrator licenses are almost certainly going to take their rejection back to circuit court.

John McMillan is the director of the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission.

McMillan told WSFA TV News that Tuesday's ruling by Judge Anderson, "Just continued high level of frustration with the way this has evolved, has become pretty obvious that there's some powerful forces in Alabama that are intent on keeping this program from getting going unless they have their way, whatever that way seems to be. They're coming at every angle."

Whether the Commission appeals Judge Anderson's ruling, proceeds to issue new license awards, or the Legislature passes some new legislation on the matter it seems virtually certain that no one in Alabama will be able to purchase medical cannabis in Alabama until 2026 at the earliest.