Speaking of tea, some of the first steps in Alabama’s fledgling medical cannabis industry are taking place inside a building behind high security fences, cameras, and signs warning the public to keep out of the CRC of Alabama cannabis cultivation facility in the tiny town of Goshen. About 1,000 marijuana plants - varieties with names like orange cream pop and hella jelly - are now being carefully cultivated at the facility. AL.com’s Mike Cason toured the facility last week. Inside the vegetative room - temperature set at 78 degrees and relative humidity 70% - row after row of the two-week to two-month-old green leafy plants are growing in a mixture of coconut husks, coconut pith, and a granular material called perlite. While the full launch of Alabama’s medical cannabis industry is tangled up in litigation, CRC of Alabama and six other companies have received licenses to grow the plants that will produce gummies, capsules, pills, tinctures, and other products to help patients with chronic pain, the harsh effects of cancer treatment, seizures, muscle spasms, PTSD, depression, panic disorder, and other conditions and symptoms. Licenses for dispensaries, which will sell the products, and for integrated companies, which can cultivate, process, transport, and sell, are still on hold, the result of numerous lawsuits by companies challenging the licensing decisions of the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC). |
