Lawmakers tackle, pass first medical pot bill

TALLAHASSEE — One of six plans to regulate medical marijuana moved forward in the state House on Tuesday after the first hearing for any of the plans.

The bill includes some of the strictest controls on Florida’s nascent medical marijuana industry of any plan offered by the Legislature. It would initially limit growers to only the seven in existence, and bans smoking, vaping and edibles. The bill, supported 14-1 in the Health Quality subcommittee, has two more committee stops before going to the House floor for a vote. None of the five Senate bills regulating the medical marijuana industry has had a hearing. The Senate will have to center on one plan; then the

two chambers will have to negotiate to make their bills identical before passing out of the Legislature and to the governor’s desk.

Florida voters overwhelmingly approved Amendment 2, the medical marijuana constitutional amendment, in the November election, but legislation implementing that amendment has been slow-going.

The House bill is supported by many of the same organizations that fought against Florida’s medical marijuana amendment, and largely opposed by medical marijuana advocates.

The bill sponsor, state Rep. Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero, said from the outset that he produced his bill with a mind toward keeping within parameters set by the U.S. Justice Department that would keep Florida off the radar of federal prosecution.

“If there’s a robust regulatory scheme, the federal government will not put their resources into enforcing federal law,” he said. “I believe this is a measured approach to faithfully implement Amendment 2.”

Rodrigues’ bill takes the seven marijuana grower/ dispensaries that are currently active under Florida law and allows them to continue as the state’s dispensaries.

As in current law, Rodrigues’ bill mandates that a grower must also process and distribute marijuana, as opposed to selling it wholesale to a retail medical marijuana store. Such stores would not exist under Rodrigues’ bill.

Six more grower/dispensaries would be allowed when the number of patients in the state reached 150,000. There would be five more allowed at 200,000 patients, and three more for every 100,000 patients after that.

With an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 potential qualified patients in the state, that would mean 27 or 30 growers, with each one servicing 18,000 to 20,000 people, assuming an even population spread. In all likelihood, the patient count would be far higher in South Florida with its larger population.

Would-be medical marijuana patients would have to suffer from cancer, epilepsy, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, PTSD, ALS, Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, or another debilitating disease “of the same kind or class,” the definition of which is still murky.

Next, potential users under Rodrigues’ bill must be permanent residents of Florida, register with the Department of Health, get a medical marijuana card, and be under the treatment of the same doctor for 90 days.

The 90-day rule, a hallmark of the pill-mill crisis when people would doctor shop for opioids, would not apply to the terminally ill.

The bill also prevents smoking, vaping or edibles, though the terminally ill would be allowed to vape.

As with other medications, there would be no sales tax on medical marijuana.

Amendment 2 backers “have asked that we treat marijuana as medicine, and we’re going to honor that,” Rodrigues said.

The bill was roundly applauded by Drug Free America, Save Our Society From Drugs, and other antidrug organizations.

“I’m pleased to see that [the bill] has incorporated many of our recommendations,” said Calvina Fay, executive director of Drug Free America.

A related group, Drug Free Florida, was the primary group in opposition to Amendment 2.

Ben Pollara, the campaign manager for the group behind Amendment 2 and one of the amendment’s authors, said “there are numerous provisions violative of the spirit and letter of the constitution.”

Pollara especially found a problem with the 90-day waiting period, which he said does not exist for any other medication.

Rodrigues’ bill also “bans virtually every common means of consumption,” he said.

Pollara also found fault with criminal penalties in the bill for patients who don’t have their medical marijuana patient card on them if they have marijuana when stopped by police. He pointed out that in many areas of the state that have largely decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana, as in South Florida, patients would face harsher penalties than recreational users.