Alabama medical cannabis license application window closing soon

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) - We’re just one week away from the deadline for businesses to apply for a medical cannabis license in Alabama.

Once the state awards those licenses, doctors can start getting certified to recommend it to qualified patients.

Doctors will be able to start prescribing medical cannabis for some patients by next summer and those patients will only be able to get those from dispensaries that are going through a long process right now to be approved to sell that cannabis.

One of the Birmingham-area entrepreneurs hoping to get one of those medical cannabis licenses says getting one is a daunting process, but worth the work and wait to help the community.

“It’s going to open up a level of medicine that they’ve never had,” said Owner of Wagon Trail Hemp Farms Joey Robertson. He could be one of the suppliers of high grade medical cannabis, if the state accepts his almost 600-page application and gives him a license.

Robertson says while the process is daunting, it is achievable. He is working to pre-set the five possible dispensary locations to set them apart from other applicants.

“We’ll have all those tied down, one per county... up to five counties. But we also have to have our future plans drawn out everything that we plan to build when we plan to build it and how we’re going to be growing cannabis,” Robertson said. The state medical cannabis law sets a 5-dispensary limit for the state and the state cannabis commission says they’ve worked this year to fine tune all the details of the rules.

“As they are built and start opening and then really, we’ll turn more into, at least for the time being, more of a regulatory agency than anything else, in trying to, to help these folks get the things they need to have done and be sure that they doing it right,” said John McMillan, Director of Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission.

Robertson’s company is in the hemp industry now, but their infrastructure is built for a much bigger operation already.

“In the three year business plan that we have to provide the AMCC, we’re showing progressive plan that shows the increases of patient needs, and the areas in which they’re going to be needed,” Robertson said.

He said so far, he has gotten a lot more support than they anticipated.

“The City of Cullman and Cullman County has always been a very conservative community, but they’ve also understood that there’s a need for medicine, and it’s going to serve a lot of people in the community,” Robertson said.

30% percent of the money the state gets from these operations will go into research and development through Alabama universities.

June 12 is the day they expect approval for these licenses, so you could see doctors prescribing medical cannabis for select conditions soon after that.

For more information on what is legal and what this license will mean, visit the AMCC site by clicking HERE.

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