Scott Powers
A bill that started out seeking to expand Florida’s limited medical marijuana program to give relief to end-of-life patients has grown into a measure to expand the program in several directions. And it got approval Monday by the Senate Rules Committee.
The overhauled Senate Bill 460 now heads back to the Senate floor, from where it had been kicked back to the committee last week after being flooded with amendments.
It was approved by majority vote in the committee Monday, though not without a fight. Jack Latvala, a Clearwater Republican, argued that it had turned into a bill to being a bill about money “under the guise of helping these kids.” He voted no.
The bill’s sponsor and several other senators countered Monday that yes, it had become partly about money: who can profit from medical marijuana. But sponsor Sen. Rob Bradley, of Orange Park, argued that happened out of necessity to help people suffering from medical conditions that might be relieved by medical marijuana.
“One thing Sen. Latvala said that I agree with, and that’s money has affected the process,” Bradley said. “As a matter of fact that’s why we stand here two years later and the product still has not been delivered to the people we promised to deliver it to.”
The bill would tie changes to two recently adopted laws. First it would tie to Florida’s Right To Try law, passed last year, by giving end-of-life patients the right to try medical marijuana. And it would go beyond what the state’s current medical marijuana law allows, by waiving the THC restrictions the state mandates.
The current law allows low-THC marijuana products to be used by approved patients with epilepsy, a handful of other tremor- or seizure-causing illnesses, or cancer.
SB 460 also would tie to the limited medical marijuana law, passed two years ago, by giving assurances to the five nurseries that won licenses in December to produce and sell marijuana-based medicines. Their licenses are being challenged in Administrative Court, by other nurseries that did not win licenses. The bill would grant licensed nurseries the assurance to carry on regardless of what the courts said about the other potential licensees.
The bill also would allow those challengers the right to get their own licenses if they win their challenges. One already has won, and eight more are pending. The bill also would allow the state to issue three more licenses when the state’s approved patients list grows long enough. So over time the bill could hypothetically lead to 17 medical marijuana processing licenses.
It also waives for future licensees a requirement that nurseries be in business 30 years to qualify. And with a late amendment offered by Democratic Sen. Audrey Gibson of Jacksonville, and approved by the committee in a close vote, the bill would eliminate rules that had effectively blocked African-American farmers from having any chance at competing for licenses.
The 2014 law, sometimes known as the Charlotte’s Web law in reference to a popular brand of low-THC marijuana-distilled medicine, has been tied up in bureaucracy and court challenges. The growers still are several months away from being able to get products onto the market, even if they survive the current challenges in court.
For that reason, Sen. Don Gaetz gave an impassioned appeal for Bradley’s bill. Gaetz recalled, two years ago, holding, in his arms, a child suffering from intractable, frequent seizures. While he did so,l the father, a law enforcement officer, decried the fact that he could not give his child Charlotte’s Web-style medicine.
“I promised that father that night,” Gaetz said. “I care about the vendors and the growers and the lawyers and the Department of Health committees, but I care more about that child, and hundreds more, thousands more, in this state, who have been waiting two years, while the bureaucratic process has ground and ground and ground.”
“For me it is a moral imperative to vote yes,” Gaetz said.
But Latvala responded, “I have the same moral imperative, to vote no.
“The reason for that is because we voted to take care of those kids two years ago, and that’s not what this bill is about,” he continued. “This bill is, A) an expansion to a whole ‘nother group of people for a treatment that’s never been proven by the FDA. It’s anecdotally successful, but it’s never been approved by a government entity … But I think the most repugnant thing is we’re using the guise of helping these kids for a special interest food fight, to expand the people that can offer this, that can make money on it.”
The bill also covers a wide range of other changes to the medical marijuana law, setting requirements for state inspections, lab audits, and addressing what other products can and cannot be sold, and what sorts of fines and license revocations the state can impose.
“What you are seeing is two years worth of seeing what is needed to be done, seeing what works, seeing what won’t work, looking at how other states are handling this, and saying to ourselves, senators, we’re not going to be California, not going to be Colorado,” Bradley said. “We are going to be Florida that does it right.”
