Residents expressed mostly discontent over a proposed local amendment set to appear on Cullman County ballots less than a week before the Nov. 5 General Election during a town hall meeting hosted by Wallace State Community College Tuesday, Oct. 29.

Local Amendment 1, if approved, would add an additional 15 percent tax on all future medical cannabis sales in Cullman County. When combined with other taxes already placed on cannabis sales the total tax would be between 33 and 34 percent of the gross sales total, nearly three times the amount of local taxes placed on hard liquor sales. Sixty-seven percent of the revenue generated from the tax would be allocated to the DA’s office “for personnel purposes,” and the remaining 33 percent would benefit “mental health issues,” at the Cullman County Delegation’s discretion.

Cullman Area Chamber of Commerce President Joey Orr moderated the event and allowed each of the event’s four panelists — Cullman County District Attorney Champ Crocker, Cullman County Sheriff’s Office Victim Services Captain Ed Potter, Wellstone Chief Operating Officer Chris Van Dyke and Joey Robertson, head of operations and public relations for Wagon Trail Hemp Farm — to open the discussion and explain how the proposed amendment would affect each of their operations.

Robertson was the only member of the panel to vocalize an opinion on the proposal. As one of only five facilities to be awarded an integrated license by the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission, Wagon Trail Hemp was in a unique position to create a “hub” within Cullman County for medical cannabis patients in North Alabama once the program goes live. However, he said the prospect of levying such a heavy tax on medical products had made him, as well as the owner of a second dispensary site in the city of Cullman, begin to consider opening the site elsewhere.

“It would make me have to consider taking this dispensary that I intend to serve Cullman County and the five surrounding counties and move it to another county. The most likely places right now would either be Jasper or Decatur,” Robertson said. “I can tell you [the one other dispensary owner in Cullman] is considering moving his as well.”

Potter and Van Dyke did not offer an endorsement for the proposal, but discussed the lack of resources local agencies have at their disposal to combat the growing mental health crisis in Cullman.

Van Dyke said growing housing costs in the area had disproportionately strained those suffering from mental illness. He said Wellstone would like to provide more residential care facilities and develop a dedicated crisis care center in Cullman for those experiencing a mental health emergency.

While Potter said he had not reviewed any research specific to medical cannabis, he expressed some concerns that what existing mental health resources were already in place could become exasperated when the state rolls out its medical cannabis program based on data linking recreational marijuana use to a rise in the demand for mental health and law enforcement services.

Robertson argued that the opposite is likely to be true by citing a 2019 report from Harvard Health which found that when medical marijuana laws had gone into effect in any given state, opioid prescriptions fell by more than 2 million daily doses filled per year.

According to the 2023 Alabama Drug Threat Assessment Report, the Alabama Department of Mental Health reported the largest increase in mental health admission data was attributed to fentanyl and other opioids in 2021 and law enforcement ranked opioids as the single greatest drug threat in the state. Opioids were also ranked as the second largest contributor to violent and property crimes just below methamphetamine.

Between 2020 and 2021 fentanyl related overdoses more than doubled from 453 to 1,069.

“[Medical cannabis] is regulated by the state. Patients are prescribed the medicine which will be logged into a state system. They are limited to a maximum amount of dosages per day. To think that these patients are going to be getting out and driving or causing issues — it’s just not recreational folks. We’re not talking about smoking pot on the corner. They are going to be using a pain patch or a suppository,” Robertson said. “To say we are going to put a ‘sin tax’ on cannabis when we have people overdosing on opioids and the dependency and mental issues they cause is far-fetched.”

Crocker said he was legally prohibited from endorsing the proposed amendment, but said his office had been seeking ways to add roughly $400,000 each year to its operating budget which would allow him to hire four more prosecutors to expedite a hefty backlog of cases he said nearly every DA in the state is currently experiencing.

“As good as our people are and as hard as they work, it takes more personnel to move cases through,” Crocker said.

Kelley Burgess said she was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia — a long-term, mostly non-curable type of leukemia — in 2017 and will have to take two chemotherapy pills daily for the remainder of her life. She expressed her frustration at the neutrality of most of the panel.

“I’m asking that you [the panel] don’t remain neutral on this. I ask that you don’t pad your pockets and you pad our health. We all have jobs and everybody deserves to be paid for their job, but not from somebody who is suffering,” Burgess said. “Be vocal about it. We’re [the patients] little peons out here, we can’t do what all y’all can do. You all mention how all of this would benefit mental illness, but what about those of us suffering from a medical illness?”

Robertson remained more sympathetic to the needs of the DA and the growing concern around access to mental health care, but he, and the majority of community members in attendance, could not reconcile with the notion of taxing medicine intended for those suffering from one of 15 likely debilitating diseases in order to fund those efforts.

“Is it really a fair deal to give these patients a new tool, have a doctor recommend it to them, and then have it be taxed at a heavier rate than alcohol,” Robertson said. “We’re giving them this tool, but making it inaccessible.”

Burgess proposed that rather taxing a medicine she would be able to use to control her nausea, a slight increase to existing local taxes on recreational products be implemented to generate the needed revenue.

“Why don’t you tax alcohol more, or nicotine. Anything like that which is killing people and actually causing mental illness,” Burgess said.

Robertson said, based on his calculations, increasing local alcohol taxes by three percent would generate roughly $275,000 in additional revenue each year.

Crocker said alcohol taxes were set by each municipality and that he was “not that familiar with the alcohol taxes.” He added that, like alcohol, the decision to add an additional tax on medical cannabis would be left up to the voters in Cullman County.

“One similarity I would say is that, like alcohol or not, that was put on the ballot for the people to decide just like this issue here will be on the ballot,” Crocker said. “At the end of the day it’s about transparency and the people deciding what’s going to happen.”