State officials still regard medicinal pot as ‘reefer madness’

Florida’s marijuana policies have been left up to diehard obstructionists. Like those Japanese soldiers left behind in the South Pacific, still fighting years after Emperor Hirohito called it quits.

The war’s over, boys. High time you surrendered to the new reality.

Well, not such a new reality. It has been almost two years since Florida voters decided the medical marijuana question. It was not close. The medicinal use of cannabis was endorsed by 71 percent of the electorate, 6,518,919 votes (1,901,033 more votes in Florida than Donald Trump managed).

No matter. Gov. Rick Scott’s minions still regarded voter intent with the same respect Harvey Weinstein afforded the word “no.” They shrugged off their constitutional mandate as an aberration to be ignored or delayed or encumbered with regulatory obstacles.

Just ask Joe Redner. The 77-year-old lung cancer patient has been in court for months fighting that misnomer of a state agency called the Florida Department of Health for the right to grow his own marijuana. The Tampa man’s doctor had recommended a concoction composed of emulsified marijuana. Except the necessary leaves and buds, thanks to inexplicable rules dreamed up in Tallahassee, can’t be sold by Florida marijuana dispensaries.

DOH lost. Leon County Circuit Judge Karen Gievers ruled on April 11 that Redner was entitled to “possess, grow and use marijuana” for his anti-cancer protocol.

“Nothing in the Amendment authorizes the Department of Health (or any other part of Florida’s government) to ignore the rights of qualifying patients to access the medical marijuana treatment to which they are entitled under the Florida Constitution, or to exclude any method by which qualifying patients may take their medicine,” the judge wrote.

Gievers reminded DOH that the department has a duty to enable “the availability and safe use of medical marijuana by qualifying patients.”

The Department of Health squealed like a pricked pig. And demanded that Judge Gievers stay her order until an appeals court decides the case, which could take months. The agency’s lawyers argued that the medical needs of a stage four cancer victim were hardly as urgent as the horrifying prospect of seriously ill Floridians growing their own medical pot “unchecked from any state regulation.” Because, if patients grow their own, the regional monopolies Florida created to cultivate, process and dispense medical marijuana won’t get their cut.

Judge Gievers slapped DOH down, though she tailored her ruling so only Redner could grow his own weed. But similar lawsuits are stacking up, thanks to the department’s purposeful dawdling.

In February, the Fort Lauderdale-based Patients and Producers Alliance sued DOH claiming that rules limiting the number of growers, manufacturers and dispensaries has limited patient access and led to inflated prices.

John Morgan, the state’s leading medical marijuana advocate, has filed suit in Tallahassee challenging the DOH ban on smokable cannabis — which was surely what most of those 6.5 million voters had in mind when they approved Amendment 2.

Meanwhile, DOH still hasn’t published the regs for marijuana patients, for doctors, for suppliers. The agency hasn’t kept up with the demand for patient ID cards. As the Tampa Bay Times noted in an editorial last week, “It’s hard not to see the gridlock as deliberate.”

It’s as if the Scott administration remains stuck in the old “reefer madness” era. The public, however, is not so archaic. In February, a poll conducted by the University of North Florida found that 62 percent of the state’s registered voters supported recreational marijuana. A national Gallup Poll registered 64 percent approval.

Thirty states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana. Nine of those states and D.C. have OK’d recreational pot. But policy makers in Florida seem obsessed with the possibility that medical marijuana patients might also crack an illegal smile.

It’s not just Florida that suffers a schizophrenic approach to pot. In January, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded an Obama era policy against prosecuting marijuana entrepreneurs in states where pot has been legalized. But last week, Sessions was trumped by Trump. The president promised a Republican senator from Colorado, where recreational marijuana generates $250 million a year in taxes, that he will respect state rights when it comes to weed.

We’re suspended in some weird Netherland, where marijuana use is simultaneously hounded by conservative politicians and exploited by captains of industry. Just last week, former U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner, once “unalterably opposed” to legalized marijuana, joined the board of Acreage Holdings, a cannabis corporation that operates in 11 states.

Here in crazyland, brewers in Colorado and Washington state can market pot-infused, get-you-high beer, while the feds warn two South Florida brewers, Invasive Species Brewing in Fort Lauderdale’s Flagler Village, and Devour Brewing in Boynton Beach, to “cease and desist” the sale of craft beer flavored with non-euphoric no-high cannabis oil.

No buzz. No matter. Not in Florida.

Fred Grimm