Foley company fighting for medical cannabis license

By Hal Scheurich

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    FOLEY, Alabama (WALA) — The Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC) put a hold on issuing medical cannabis business licenses June 16, 2023. This was just four days after that same it announced the winning applicants. The stay on licenses came about after several companies complained and filed suit, alleging the scoring system used in evaluating applicants is flawed.

The medical marijuana movement in Alabama looked to be off and running, but before the first business license could be awarded, AMCC ordered a stay until an independent review of the scoring data used for the selections is completed. Commission Chairman, Dr. Steven Stokes told other members of AMCC at the June 16 meeting that inconsistencies in the tabulation of scores had been discovered.

“People were awarded large numbers of points that weren’t even operating yet or stated that they would be doing things that they’re not doing yet and we’re already operating. We know what it takes. We’re ready to go,” said CEO of Oscity Labs, Ray French.

French’s new sister company to Oscity is Specialty Medical Products of Alabama (SMPA) and is one of 90 who applied for licensing with AMCC in six categories, ranging from farming to manufacturing and transport. Foley-based SMPA was created for the specific purpose of bringing medical cannabis products to patients in the Alabama.

Oscity is already Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) certified which is the standard set by the Food and Drug Administration. Despite GMP certification and being a top manufacturer in the cannabis industry nationally, the Foley company only scored 33rd out of the 38 companies who applied for an Integrated Facility License. Company officials said the scores were given without a single visit to any of the facilities.

“If you look at the actual letter of the law, it says that they’re supposed to visit applicants and what they’re proposing is that they’re going to visit the awardees and only see those locations after they’ve awarded the initial licenses,” French explained.

French said the job of scoring the applicants was given to the University of South Alabama. The names and associations of the individuals doing the scoring aren’t being made available and applicants aren’t allowed to communicate with any of the Cannabis Commission members. Because of this, French said there is concern over lack of transparency and that his companies are being as open as they can about their business practices in hopes of reconsideration.

There’s already 350 acres of cannabis being harvested from their Escambia County farm which is being processed inside their 100,000 square foot Foley manufacturing facility. With the addition of a state-of-the-art clean room, armored vehicle for transport and several retail locations across the state, SMPA is sitting on ready to deliver the goods.

“This is the nicest facility, not just in the state but in the country so for them to look over the facility readiness and only award us sixty percent of those points was also really shocking. Those are the things we want to be instigated and hopefully, when we get these new scores on August 10th that they have been rectified and maybe the problem in tabulation was our application alone and hopefully, that’s what we see,” said SMPA CEO, Chris Whaley.

Another concern is that several of the companies making the cut are either from out-of-state or don’t currently have an operational facility. The independent review that’s being done is only to re-tabulate the scoring data already taken, not to re-score the facilities themselves.

Fox 10 News did reach out to AMCC today for comment. A spokesperson replied by email saying they could not comment on the process because of pending litigation but that contingent on the court lifting the stay, the Commission will re-award licenses at its August 10th meeting.

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