Legislative group hears from Rx pot advocates
Now that medical marijuana is the law of the land, advocates and lawmakers in Oklahoma are focusing on how it might look in the next few weeks or months.
The first meeting of the Medical Marijuana Working Group gave its 13 members insight into what advocates and the industry want, especially after the Board of Health adopted controversial rules.
On display Wednesday were the major players, political groups, future patients and business representatives, and each had a different opinion. While they all want medical marijuana, each group brought different ideas that could help legislators shape the law both in small and big ways.
Four groups spoke to lawmakers and the public in a packed committee room at the Oklahoma Capitol. Committee Co-Chair Greg McCortney, a Republican senator from Ada, said the panel will meet every week on Wednesday.
New Health Solutions Oklahoma, an organization that sprang from a political effort late in the State Question 788 campaign, drafted 275 pages of policy its leaders hope to put into law.
It would limit the size of a grow operation to avoid product surplus and to give small growers a better chance to compete in the market. The draft also includes quality control and laboratory licensing rules.
“These are all the things addressed in our legislation but not adequately addressed in the Board of Health guidelines,” Executive Director Bud Scott told the working group.
Scott said the Board of Health overstepped its rule-making limits when adopting some of the regulations he thinks are needed. His proposed law would give it the authority to regulate those things.
Green the Vote is another group working politically on marijuana policy. While their main goal now is to see that recreational marijuana gets on the ballot, they presented model legislation for lawmakers to consider Wednesday. Founder Isaac Caviness said these rules would draw a line in the sand against some of the board’s regulations.
For example, their model legislation wouldn’t restrict patients’ access, he said. The Board of Health rules force women of child-bearing age to take a pregnancy test before getting a recommendation for medical marijuana.
“The patient-doctor
relationship is where that would stand, not in the regulations,” said Caviness.
He also wouldn’t exclude types of cannabis, whereas the rules in place now ban smokable products.
“There are too many reasons why a patient would need a smokable product rather than a tincture or something else,” he said, citingit as a way to quickly ease anxiety or PTSD symptoms.
Green the Vote’s proposal asks lawmakers to prevent local governments from saying where marijuana businesses can set up shop, aside from common zoning rules. Cannabis employees should also be exempt from the restrictions that ban prior felony convictions for hopeful business owners, Caviness said.
The group told lawmakers they are against government inspections of home-grow operations and a “means test” to own a dispensary in the form of a bond.
“Someone would have to have $100,000 in an account to never be touched,” Caviness said. “This would restrict the free market. This would be bad for patients. It would drive the price up.”
Lawmakers heard from Oklahomans for Health and Oklahomans for Cannabis.
As the drafters of State Question 788 more than two years ago, Oklahomans for Health urged policy-makers to avoid limits on what conditions a patient must have. Founder Chip Paul also said he wants the business available to most Oklahomans and allow people to grow
their own plants.
The Board of Health rules were a good starting point, he added but should be amended.
Shawn Jenkins with Oklahomans for Cannabis didn’t offer a propposed law, but he left members of the committee with a challenge that they keep in mind patients who are suffering and waiting for the law to fully be in effect.
“Do not fall victim to state agencies that have already destroyed the faith and the will of the people,” Jenkins said. “I’m going to submit to you that if you don’t have the strong principles or ethos to operate in these next few months, you’re going to be compromised, coopted, and you’ll all be together in November when the people are mad at you.”