James Call
A significant rewrite is coming to the Charlotte’s Web glitch bill, according to a variety of sources.
Tuesday morning, SPB 7066 sponsor Sen. Rob Bradley pulled the proposal from the Senate floor after lawmakers filed seven amendments late Monday.
Lawmakers and stakeholders say the move gives them more time to continue to work on refining the Bradley proposal. They want a higher limit on the permissible level of THC in the medicine and fewer regulations on who can grow medicinal marijuana and how the medicine processed from the plant is distributed.
“Because of the slew of amendments that were filed today and the prospect that many of them would have passed they decided to go back and rework the bill,” said Sen. Jeff Clemens who had filed six of the amendments.
“We’ll see a bill that expands the use for more people and help more Floridians,” predicted Clemens.
The amendments would have, among other things, clarified rules governing inspection procedures, the licensing of dispensing organizations, license revocation and the transportation of cannabis medicine between retailers and growers.
Florida’s medicinal marijuana law has been tied up in hearings and lawsuits since last June. Bradley sponsored the measure in 2014 and has made its implementation a top priority for 2015.
The Compassionate Medicinal Cannabis Act of 2014 law tightly regulates the growing, dispensing and use of medicinal marijuana. The 2015 glitch bill loosens the regulations somewhat and is self-executing, bypassing the contentious rule-making process that has delayed the 2014 law from going into effect.
However, growers, patient advocates and investors have seen the 2015 effort as an opportunity to expand Florida’s medicinal marijuana law to treat more illnesses by authorizing the use of more strains of marijuana that have higher levels of THC than currently permitted. Bradley favors a slower lifting of marijuana prohibitions to avoid problems he says other states have experienced. Yet, Bradley also consistently acknowledges that Senators have a diversity of opinions and that he sees his job as providing the opportunity for the Senate’s will to prevail.
“The regulatory structure is something that we have to get right,” said Sen. Jeff Brandes, who filed a more expansive marijuana law than SPB 7066. “Whatever you do today you are going to create an interest group that will be fighting against any amendments to creating more licensure down the road.”
Brandes said Bradley’s maneuver enables Senators to continue discussing a variety of issues with experts in the 23 states that allow the medicinal use of marijuana.
“It gives us another week and to bring forth the best ideas on the regulatory environment, the list of conditions, (and) regulations on cultivating and dispensing,” said Brandes. “ I expect we’ll see a significantly different proposal next week.”
Brandes support more licenses to cultivate marijuana than the 20 authorized by SPB 7066. He and others question whether a licensed grower also has to be a retailer and think the THC issue should be left to the doctor and patient.
“All of those issues are still up in discussion and I think that is why Sen. Bradley has prudently delayed this bill until next week and let us continue to have those talks with national experts,” said Brandes.
