Alabama lawmakers cleared a medical cannabis bill for Gov. Kay Ivey’s signature this month, moving the state a step closer to joining more than three dozen others that allow patients to use marijuana for treatment of specific illnesses. But a much broader push to legalize a lottery, sports betting and casino gambling ran out of time in the House of Representatives, leaving that debate unresolved with only one legislative day left before the 2021 session closes.
The medical cannabis legislation cleared both chambers of the Legislature and now awaits Ivey’s signature. The bill passed the House for the first time on a Wednesday, then returned to the Senate, which approved the House’s amendments before sending the measure to the governor’s desk. If signed, Alabama would become the 37th state to legalize marijuana for medical use.
“As with any piece of legislation that reaches the governor’s desk, we look forward to thoroughly reviewing it,” Ivey spokeswoman Gina Maiola said in a statement. “We appreciate the debate from the Legislature on the topic. This is certainly an emotional issue. We are sensitive to that and will give it the diligence it deserves.”
Beth Lyons, a former state legislator who now works as a Mobile-based lobbyist for the Baldwin County Association of Greenhouse Growers, said Alabama’s late arrival to the medical cannabis debate carried an upside from a regulatory standpoint. “We had all the state laws to review,” Lyons said. “I think we have a very well-regulated industry we have created.”
National observers describe Alabama’s approach as unusually cautious compared with programs in other states. Karen O’Keefe, director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, said the bill limits the list of qualifying conditions more tightly than most other states’ laws. “Alabama’s bill is more on the conservative side,” O’Keefe said, noting that Mississippi’s law, approved by more than 75 percent of voters in a statewide referendum, is considerably broader. That Mississippi law is currently being challenged before the state’s Supreme Court over questions about signatures collected on the ballot petition.
Public support for medical cannabis nationally has climbed sharply since a 2004 poll found 75 percent approval, O’Keefe said. “It’s only grown since then,” she said. “More people now believe in medical cannabis and it’s over 90 percent. More people now support medical marijuana than believe man landed on the moon.”
Alabama’s version of the law would also charge doctors a $300 licensing fee and require additional training before they can recommend cannabis to patients, restrictions O’Keefe said could limit how many patients ultimately gain access. By comparison, she said, Oklahoma places no restriction on qualifying conditions and roughly 8 percent of that state’s population has access to medical cannabis. “It’s the broadest in the entire country,” O’Keefe said, adding that access in most other states runs closer to 1 or 2 percent of the population.
The bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Tim Melson, is a physician, but much of the resistance to his legislation came from within his own party. The bill passed the Senate easily on a 20-10 vote, but a half-dozen House members mounted a filibuster on a Tuesday night session, running out the legislative clock to delay a vote. Opponents’ chief concern, according to lawmakers who debated the measure, was that the program could eventually be loosened to allow recreational use. Lyons said that scenario is foreclosed by the bill’s text. “Some legislators seemed to think this would morph into recreational,” she said. “The Legislature might want to do that in the future, but it’s impossible now.”
Before the House gave final approval, the bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Mike Ball, R-Madison, fielded a wave of amendments, most of which were tabled. One notable exception came from Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, who raised concerns about the size of government the new law would create and proposed automatically repealing it if the federal government ever reclassifies marijuana as legal. Because marijuana remains a Schedule 1 drug, doctors cannot prescribe it and pharmacies cannot dispense it directly, so Alabama’s bill, like similar laws elsewhere, routes access through specially trained physicians and licensed dispensaries. Simpson argued that if the federal classification changed, pharmacies would gain the ability to dispense cannabis, but patients under Alabama’s law would still be required to use dispensaries. “This gives the Legislature a choice to do something,” Simpson said.
Ball pushed back, arguing lawmakers should “cross that bridge when we come to it” since the law would not take effect until 2022 at the earliest and a regulatory commission still has to be appointed next session. Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, argued Simpson’s proposed amendment was unnecessary because federal reclassification would automatically eliminate the dispensary requirement on its own. “If the federal government decides to reclassify marijuana, the bill unravels on its own,” England said. House Speaker Pro Tempore Victor Gaston, R-Mobile, spoke in favor of the underlying bill and against Simpson’s amendment, urging members to trust Ball’s handling of the issue. The amendment was ultimately tabled, and the House passed the bill 68-34 with one member abstaining.
The measure proved broadly popular with the local legislative delegation. Only Simpson and fellow Republicans Shane Stringer and Harry Shiver voted against the bill in the House, while every state senator representing Mobile and Baldwin counties voted in favor.
Supporters say the program is designed to pay for itself. Lyons said tax revenue generated by medical cannabis sales is intended to cover the cost of a new state agency as well as enforcement responsibilities handled by the state agriculture department and the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency. Thirty percent of that revenue would be directed toward medical research, including work underway at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, with any remaining funds flowing into the state’s general fund. “It’s unclear how much will be left over,” Lyons said. “There will be some, but it depends on how many patients there will be.” She estimated the program could ultimately serve as many as 290,000 patients statewide, based on enrollment patterns in other states, though the law’s relatively narrow list of qualifying conditions is expected to keep the patient population smaller than in less restrictive states such as Oklahoma, which brings in roughly $110 million a year in program revenue.
Not everyone is satisfied with how the law is written. Alabama’s bill bars smokable cannabis and raw plant material, sometimes called “flower,” a restriction that critics say could put dispensaries at a financial disadvantage. O’Keefe said other states that banned flower saw cannabis retailers forced to operate at a loss in their early years because extracting cannabis into oils and other manufactured forms costs considerably more than selling the raw plant. Christopher Butts, executive director of the Alabama Medical Marijuana Association, said the ban on smokable products cuts out patients who struggle to use pills or edibles and need faster relief from pain or other symptoms. “They’re just cutting out a huge part of the population,” Butts said. Lyons said lawmakers who drafted the bill did allow creams as an option for patients unable to take pills, but concluded a version of the bill that included smokable cannabis would not have had the votes to pass this year. “We didn’t think it could be passed,” she said. “We didn’t even bother.”
While medical cannabis cleared the Legislature, a far more ambitious gambling package stalled just short of the finish line. The Senate this session passed a bill combining a state lottery, expanded casino-style gaming and sports betting into a single package, mirroring moves already made in Mississippi and Florida, the two states closest to Mobile and Baldwin counties. But the House failed to act on the combined bill, and after a chaotic session May 6 in which a smaller group of lawmakers ran out the legislative clock debating a stripped-down, lottery-only version, the matter was pushed to the Legislature’s final scheduled day.
Lyons, who has tracked the gambling debate closely, said a handful of factors have kept a deal out of reach. A bloc of Republican lawmakers remains firmly opposed to any gambling expansion, while some Democrats, whose votes are needed to pass the legislation, object to provisions that would shut down casinos already operating in less affluent parts of the state. Lawmakers are also divided over where new gambling revenue should go, with some pushing to direct proceeds toward Medicaid, others toward expanding rural broadband access, and still others advocating for additional education funding. “I think there’s hope for an agreement,” Lyons said. “I remain optimistic.”
Lyons said the House’s last-minute pivot toward a lottery-only bill reflected growing frustration among gambling supporters over stalled negotiations rather than any formal change in strategy. “Legislators were frustrated with the negotiations,” she said. “Some wanted to pass a lottery.” Supporters argue a broader gambling package would boost Alabama’s tourism industry and create jobs, not just at casinos themselves but among suppliers and vendors that serve the gambling industry.
In the meantime, Lyons said, Alabama residents continue to send gambling dollars across state lines. Mississippi, which has operated casinos for years and more recently added a lottery, sold more than $111 million in lottery tickets in the first quarter of 2020 alone, according to the Mississippi Lottery Corporation. After paying out more than $72 million in prizes, the lottery cleared roughly $39 million in profit for the quarter, with about $26 million of that total credited to the state as proceeds.
Alabamians have also cashed in across the state line to the east. According to the Florida Lottery, more than 1,620 Alabama residents claimed prizes of $600 or more between the start of 2018 and March 2019, including at least 183 winners from Mobile County alone. Among them was a Mobile resident who claimed a $223,639 prize in 2018, and a Wilmer man who brought home $175,000 from one of Florida’s lottery games.
Mississippi’s coastal tourism industry, meanwhile, has continued to benefit from cross-border visitors. Coastal Mississippi was the top travel-spending market in the nation in 2020, according to the region’s tourism board, with coastal tourism accounting for roughly a third of the state’s tourism-related jobs. “Coastal Mississippi is perfectly poised to welcome visitors to a destination with an abundance of safe, enjoyable adventures, small coastal communities offering unique experiences, plenty of space to roam and Southern hospitality at its finest,” Coastal Mississippi CEO Milton Segarra said in a statement, adding that survey data showed intent to visit the region outpacing interest in Pensacola, Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, Baton Rouge and Lake Charles, Louisiana, over the previous 18 months.
With the Legislature’s session set to conclude, lawmakers are expected to revisit the gambling package one final time, leaving open the question of whether Alabama will follow Mississippi and Florida in tapping lottery and casino revenue, even as its medical cannabis program moves toward becoming law.