House lawmakers are ready to vote on a newly-amended bill to regulate Florida’s medical marijuana industry this week, with the vote over one of the hottest bills of the legislative session likely happening Tuesday.
State lawmakers significantly overhauled a legislative proposal to regulate Florida’s medical marijuana industry on Friday, putting the House measure, HB 1397, more in line with the less restrictive Senate bill.
Among the alterations: getting rid of the 90-day waiting period for patients to be prescribed medical cannabis, reducing training requirements for doctors as well as allowing edibles and “vaping.”
Bill sponsor Rep. Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero, had hinted several weeks ago that House lawmakers were willing to budge on edibles and vaping.
“If we can get proper labeling on vaping and edibles done, that is one of the subjects of our negotiation with the Senate,” he said.
The amended bill expands the use of medical marijuana in different forms as long as it isn’t “attractive to children,” something opponents were especially concerned about with the previous version of the bill.
Under the new bill, patients with chronic pain can be recommended medical marijuana, but only if it is linked with another debilitating condition -- a condition in line with the Senate proposal for the bill.
Medical marijuana advocates had passionately opposed the House proposal, criticizing it for being too restrictive and for accommodating to anti-drug groups like the Drug Free America Foundation, which spent millions of dollars opposing Amendment 2 last year.
Under HB 1397 sponsored by Rep. Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero, Florida’s current seven dispensaries would be given first dibs on selling medical pot. After 150,000 patients enroll in the medical marijuana registry, the department would then, and only then, open up licensing to the second round of dispensaries.
One black farmer under the Florida chapter of the Black Farmers and Agriculturists Association would be automatically licensed under the House bill, but other black farmers would have to wait until Florida hit the 150,000 patient mark to capitalize on the state’s booming medical marijuana industry.
The Senate version, seen as the less restrictive measure moving through the state legislature, would grandfather in the seven current MMTCs and increase the cap on the number of marijuana dispensaries, expanding the number of businesses by five more in October and by four more for every 75,000 patients in the Compassionate Use registry.
The new provisions come during the tail-end of the legislative session, which is set to wrap up Friday.
Medical marijuana has been one of the most hotly-debated issues during this year’s legislative session and state lawmakers will need to reach some sort of agreement over how to move forward with its regulation before the legislative session ends.
Over 71 percent of Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment expanding medical marijuana last fall and thousands of patients are now waiting to see what their next move will be to find relief for their debilitating illnesses.
While some have viewed the House’s amended bill as a step in the right direction for the future of medical marijuana, the amended version of the legislation hasn’t totally eliminated all concerns.
"It's certainly an improvement over its previous iterations but is still extraordinarily flawed," said Florida For Care executive director Ben Pollara. "Vaping and edibles should have been allowed to begin with, and the 90 day wait eliminated at the outset, but I'm nonetheless happy to see those things happen in the amended bill. But the physician certification language is still fatally flawed and HB 1397 firmly maintains the cartel system that ultimately harms patient access."
Neither the Senate nor the House version allow smokeable marijuana, but amendment authors say smoking is disallowed in public, which could imply it is allowed already. The lack of clarity, some say, could result in big problems for patients and could end up being the focus of lawsuits if it isn’t allowed.
Not all lawmakers have hopped onboard with the new version of the bill, either -- Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, who previously supported HB 1397, explained she wasn’t sure what the results of expanding medical marijuana in Florida would be.
“We’ve already seen the pill mill prescription debacle in this state,” she said Friday. “You thought that was bad? Wait until you see the big toe pain epidemic.”
The House reconvenes Tuesday morning at 10:30 a.m.
Reach reporter Allison Nielsen by email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com or follow her on Twitter: @AllisonNielsen.
