MONTGOMERY — Medical cannabis licenses are on hold in Alabama as the commission tasked with overseeing the industry are revisiting the scoring of applications.

The Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission voted June 12 to award 21 medical cannabis business licenses among 90 applicants.

“After the June license awards, we immediately at the staff level realized that there were some things that just didn’t add up,” said Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission Executive Director John McMillan. “And instead of trying to cover that up, which would have been much easier, I think we probably would have gotten away with it. But we knew that was not the right thing to do. We knew the right thing to do was to admit the problems, and then go about fixing the problem.”

KPMG — a global network of firms providing audit, tax and advisory services — has been retained by the commission to verify the numbers and statistics that were used to score the applicants.

The commission partnered with University of South Alabama to coordinate the application review process and recruit 66 evaluators who assessed and scored the 90 applicants.

“We do not have any evidence at this time that there was any impropriety or incompetence in the way that the applications were evaluated by the team that was selected by USA,” said Willam Webster, legal counsel for the commission. “The only problem that we are aware of, which we are fixing, is the ones relating to math and inconsistencies that have been located that we’re getting KPMG to confirm and rectify.”

The commission plans to void its previous awarding of licenses at its Aug. 10 meeting where it plans to re-announce its selections for medical cannabis licenses following the KPMG review.

Webster said it is unclear how many applicants will be impacted.

Montgomery Circuit Judge James Anderson issued a stay last month halting the issuance of licenses until the scoring could be rectified in response to lawsuits from losing applicants.

A lawsuit was also filed against the commission earlier this year by a few applicants claiming a faulty online system used for the commission’s application process led to their applications’ denial.

Georgia ran into similar legal issues in its years-long effort to rollout medical marijuana.

The 2019 law creating the Georgia Access to Medical Cannabis Commission only allowed the commission to issue six licenses.

In 2021, the commission issued two Class I licenses and four tentative Class II licenses for medical marijuana after scoring more than 70 applicants. However, the Class II licenses are still on hold due to lawsuits from nine applicants that weren’t awarded licenses.

The lawsuits allege unfair and inconsistent scoring by the commission, whose records and documents aren’t subject to open records.

However, Georgia’s first medical cannabis dispensary under its Class I licensed facility — which allows growing, cultivating and manufacturing THC oil in an indoor space no more than 100,000 square feet — opened late April.

In 2021, Alabama became the 37th state to legalize medical marijuana, allowing certain illnesses and conditions to be treated with the medication through pill form, capsules, creams, oil, etc. Most patients will be allowed up to 50 mg of legal cannabis per day and after a few months a physician would be able to increase the dosage if necessary. THC is the main ingredient for cannabis.