New medical marijuana licenses granted

It’s been a very long process, but after two years, some Alabama companies received licenses Thursday to grow, process, and sell medical marijuana in the state. The Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission granted 24 licenses to companies that will become a part of this brand-new industry in our state.Most of the companies getting that good news were also approved in June. But those licenses were rescinded soon after because of errors in the way the companies’ evaluations were tabulated.Since that time, another big blow to this process was when chairman Dr. Steven Stokes resigned just over a week ago, after a lawsuit claimed he wasn’t eligible to be on the commission. But today, two dozen approvals. Good news for those companies, but disappointment for the 66 others that were denied. Many had already invested millions into getting their facilities ready to go.New Commission chairman Rex Vaughn said, “I wish they had not gotten so far in front of our process, not knowing who’s going to get a license. Because when you have 90 applicants to consider, we all know that all 90 are not going to get one. But for some reason, a lot of our applicants assumed they were going to qualify for a license. And that’s unfortunate, but that’s where we are.”Now the companies that were approved will have to pay their annual licensing fees which are up to $50,000 each. Then there will be on-site inspections. The chairman says there’s a chance some of these companies won’t make it all the way through the process to get their permanent license.