People looking to ring in the new year with consumable hemp products may find themselves out of luck on New Years Day as a new law takes effect requiring licensing—with no known licenses actually issued.
There appear to be numerous challenges that have prevented licenses from moving forward, including confusion from city and county officials about their role in the licensing process, delayed access to applications and onerous restrictions that have many existing retailers choosing to close shop rather than try to comply.
Jackie Kendrick, an administrative assistant in the licensure and compliance office of the Alabama ABC board, confirmed to APR that no licenses have been issued to her knowledge.
“Unfortunately, due to how strict everything is, some people are choosing to close rather than get a license,” Kendrick said.
Kendrick also confirmed fielding calls from city and county officials about their role in licensing, which Kendrick said is ultimately the same as in granting alcohol and tobacco licenses. Another source familiar with the matter confirmed the same. In most cases, that would mean the city or county government holding a vote to approve or deny a license.
But confusion at the local government level is only part of the issue according to some local shop owners.
Cordell Harris, who owns multiple hemp and tobacco shops in the state, said applications only became available in mid-December despite the application process requiring a projected six weeks when factoring in the need for city or county approval.
“They only just released the application for us a couple of weeks ago,” Harris said. “Of course, lots of down days for the holidays and weekends since then as well. And in order for me to sell hemp, I have to also sell liquor. Both liquor and hemp licenses require city council approval, so we’re talking about an approximately 6 week process at best and we had 2 weeks.”
Harris sits the process has been an “absolute nightmare” that is likely to have a sizable impact on his business.
“Well legally I have to pull every single hemp product tomorrow, until my licenses are completed—which I’m expecting to be mid February at best,” Harris said. “With the massive amount of people applying it’ll likely be longer. So (the impact is) everything that comes along with that: big loss of sales, etc. If they’d released these apps back in October it’d have been no problem to get compliant before the new year.”
Conversely, Harris said the legislation could have further extended the deadline for the new regulations to allow more time to iron out the process.
