State legislators’ grades on pot measures mixed
The man who got the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment on last year’s ballot is giving the Legislature an A for not infringing on the voter-approved measure, he said.
David Couch said the program is intact after 85 days of debate in the 91st General Assembly.
Meanwhile, Melissa Fults, who attended nearly every legislative meeting as executive director of Drug Policy Education Group, gives legislators a B+ because “they did a fair job and worked hard to get it implemented — for the most part.”
And Jerry Cox, who fought tooth and nail against the amendment as president of the Family Council, said he is giving lawmakers a D for not passing further protections for the public.
Fifty-one medical-marijuana-related bills were filed in this year’s regular legislative session, according to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
analysis. Seventeen are now law. Eight are on the governor’s desk.
Among other things, the bills that passed strengthen background checks, impose a 4 percent tax on marijuana transactions, ban the smoking of medical marijuana by people under 21, require childproof packaging and order dispensaries to stock vaporizers.
Some of the bills that didn’t make it through both chambers received headlines because they would have banned all smoking of the drug, halted the law’s implementation until the federal government changes federal marijuana laws, and disallowed edible products. They did not become law even though a majority of lawmakers said before the legislative session that they opposed medical marijuana.
Marijuana proponents and opponents agree on one thing — laws on the drug would have turned out differently without Rep. Douglas House, R-North Little Rock, who organized marijuana-related legislation throughout the legislative session.
House, a 63-year-old Iraq veteran, opposed the amendment and gave money to Cox’s group. In his years as a lawyer in the Arkansas National Guard, he advised soldiers who flew helicopters to be on the lookout for pot fields in Arkansas, and he photographed license plates at a pot-growing convention in the Ozarks.
House said he’s a soldier — used to carrying out orders he doesn’t like. He believes that’s why House Speaker Jeremy Gillam, R-Judsonia, tapped him to take charge of marijuana bills.
And some things did not change over the course of the session.
“This is a terrible amendment,” House said in an interview Thursday, reflecting on the fight to stop those who would undo parts of the amendment during the 85 days of this year’s regular session.
While he did not like the amendment, House was supportive of legislative talks in 2013 about some sort of medical-marijuana measure.
He said it was clear — after the narrow failure of a medical-marijuana proposal in the 2012 election — that attitudes were changing in Arkansas. If the Legislature didn’t make a change, medical-marijuana supporters would push ahead.
And in November 2016, voters approved the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment.
House said he used to be more suspicious of medical marijuana, but now, “How can I disbelieve so many people?”
“Some folks — they don’t want to listen,” he said. “They don’t want to hear.”
At his church, people pull him aside to tell him about using illegal marijuana to control arthritis or to get off opioids they had used to control chronic pain.
There’s a mantra House has used over the course of the session: “First, make sure marijuana gets into the hands of those people who believe they need it. Second is to keep it out of the hands of kids. Third, keep it out of the automobiles. Fourth, keep crime out of it.”
House said he accomplished that by plugging holes in the amendment and giving regulatory agencies — like the Alcoholic Beverage Control Division — leeway in handling marijuana regulations.
One example, Act 640 by House, gives Alcoholic Beverage Control the power to ban packaging and advertising that might make marijuana appealing to children.
But Cox, president of the Family Council, says lawmakers during the 91st General Assembly were weak on marijuana.
“They had the best opportunity they will ever have to make this truly medical marijuana and what they’ve done is they’ve set this up to be recreational marijuana masquerading under the banner of medicine,” he said. “That’s why I would give them a D. They did regulate it a little bit, but very little.”
Cox said legislative mistakes include failing to pass bills to ban marijuana smoking, and manufactured edible products and drinks.
“People would ask, ‘What’s left if you can’t smoke it and you can’t eat it?’ Well, really what’s left is medicine,” he said. “You can take it in a pill, a capsule, liquid, oils, nasal sprays, mouth sprays, patches, ointments — the usual ways that a person takes most medicines.”
Senate Bill 333 — by Sen. Gary Stubblefield, R-Branch — would have banned manufactured marijuana food and drinks, unless mixed at home. Senate Bill 357 — by Sen. Jason Rapert, R-Bigelow — would have banned smoking marijuana. The Senate failed to pass the bills.
In a phone interview Friday, Rapert said he believes the Legislature will have to return at some point to address problems with the med- ical-marijuana amendment. He was in Denver to find out more about Colorado’s recreational-marijuana program.
“It appears Arkansas is looser in some areas than even the state of Colorado,” he said. “I frankly don’t think that Arkansas addressed all of the issues, but I don’t know if it’s possible in the amount of time that we had to respond.”
Rapert said one problematic bill — House Bill 1058 by House — removed language from the amendment that required doctors to weigh the potential pros and cons of medical marijuana. HB1058 is now Act 5.
“We have a situation where doctors are not formally prescribing to these patients,” he said. House had said the bill was needed because doctors would not feel comfortable writing marijuana certifications under the requirement, and it would delay implementation.
Rapert said the Legislature was focused on issues besides marijuana during the regular session.
“However, we have passed some legislation, and I think it was basically to do what we could to try to make this thing work,” he said.
Cox said the Family Council did have some victories.
House Bill 1991 — by Rep. Robin Lundstrum, R-Elm Springs — bans medical-marijuana vending machines, requires that marijuana products be kept in childproof packaging and limits THC content in food and drink. THC is the component of marijuana that produces a high. The bill is awaiting action by Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
House Bill 1400 — also by Lundstrum — bans the smoking of medical marijuana where cigarette smoke is
banned, and around children and pregnant women, and in cars, boats and planes. HB1400 is now Act 740.
“When we did our voter guide survey, 70 [percent] or 80 percent of lawmakers were against it and yet, once it passed, it was really difficult to get any kind of regulation,” Cox said.
Besides House’s influence, some lawmakers said the people had spoken and they didn’t want to change the amendment, Cox said. Marijuana lobbyists also were a powerful factor, as was the House Rules Committee.
That committee is unique in that its members are appointed by the House speaker, who tapped House and supported his take on policy.
“That decision really created a bottleneck for a number of good bills,” Cox said. “If Rep. House and eight members of the 15-member Rules Committee decided that a bill was not going to go anywhere, then that was the end of it.”
Of the 25 bills the Legislature approved, House is the primary sponsor of 15 and a co-sponsor of two.
House actively opposed one bill approved by the Legislature — House Bill 2190 by Rep. Clint Penzo, R-Springdale. That bill requires pharmacist consultants at dispensaries, vaporizer availability and bans “paraphernalia for combustible marijuana delivery” like rolling papers. The bill awaits action by Hutchinson.
Lawmakers have said pharmacist groups — which fought the amendment — lobbied for Penzo’s bill.
House said that looking back, he no longer opposes the bill. There are prescription medicines that react poorly when combined with marijuana, and pharmacists would be able to sort out some of those complications, he said.
He said he’s not worried about any of the bills sponsored by others that became law. He’s also not too concerned about a bill he sponsored that failed to pass in the Senate — House Bill 1371, which pertained to ownership of marijuana-related facilities.
Amendment 98, as the marijuana amendment is known, requires that 60 percent of a facility’s owners be Arkansans, but it doesn’t specify what share of the business’s ownership Arkansans must hold. If there were 10 owners of a dispensary, seven could be Arkansans to satisfy the amendment, but the remaining three out-ofstate owners could hold a disproportionately large share in the organization.
HB1371 was aimed at closing what supporters of the measure called a loophole. House said out-of-state owners would probably find a way around the regulation, but he supported a move by the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission to include the measure in their draft rules.
Couch, the amendment’s sponsor, faulted lawmakers for not making the change.
“This is meant to be for Arkansans, and we let some out-of-state interests wiggle their way into the Legislature,” he said.
Couch said he has some concerns about House Bill 1460, by Rep. Carlton Wing, R-North Little Rock, which gave increased rights to employers to restrict employees who use medical marijuana. The bill is now Act 593.
Wing said the bill ensures employee safety and places the burden of proof on the employer. Couch said the bill — as presented by Wing — shouldn’t be a problem, however it was written in a “loosey-goosey” way that could cause some people to have to choose between a medical-marijuana card and their job.
But overall, “most of the laws that they passed were good laws that will help implement the program in a responsible manner,” Couch said. “Some of them were knee-jerk reactions to some latent biases that they may have with respect to marijuana, but don’t really affect the overall purpose of the program.”
Fults, who supported a competing medical-marijuana measure that was knocked off the ballots during early voting last year, said the worst bill of the session was one that disallows the state National Guard members from using or handling medical marijuana.
She said they’re already prohibited under federal law, but the state legislation goes a step further by preventing Guard members from being caregivers for medical-marijuana patients.
Beyond House — whom she gave an A+ for his efforts — Fults said there’s another reason lawmakers didn’t do more to undo the amendment. Some changed their minds.
Rep. Tim Lemons, R-Cabot, said on the House floor that he voted against the amendment, but after going to CARTI Cancer Center with his wife for several weeks, he re-evaluated his position.
“There’s a real need for this,” he said during an emotional speech.