James Call
The Florida Department of Health will hold a rule development workshop for a medicinal marijuana law Tuesday in Orlando. DOH’s first set of rules for growing marijuana and selling oil processed from the plant were thrown out by an administrative law judge in November. As of Monday afternoon the Department had declined to provide any information about the meeting except for an outline of an agenda without any supporting documents.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world, I just don’t know what I’m going to say tomorrow,” said Louis Rotundo of the Florida Medical Cannabis Association. “From what I can tell it’s informational; they’re going to tell us what the judge said. I have the judge’s order in front of me right now.”
The FMCA was part of a group including growers and a landscape company that challenged DOH’s proposed regulations for the state’s Charlotte’s Web law. Rotundo had said in July after the first rule development workshop that he expected there would be a rules rewrite. He told anyone within earshot in a lobby outside of the meeting room that DOH was not listening, not listening to business owners, to patient advocates, to anyone.
Monday he said the department made it easy to challenge their proposal.
“The reality is the department never embraced its partners in this process. That’s who the people sitting out in the audience were – their partners. The Department of Health can’t do this by themselves nor can the partners. Nor can the legislature,” said Rotundo. “The legislature set the guidance, the Department’s job was to adopt the rules and the partners’ position was to say whether or not that rule was economically feasible. They never embraced the partners.”
Last month Judge David W. Watkins invalidated DOH’s first attempt at a regulatory structure on five points and seven requirements which he said were not supported by law. Rotundo calls the ruling along with a letter from the Joint Administrative Procedures Committee a roadmap to a legal rule, “Just check these boxes and you are fine with us is what they said,” he explained.
“This rule could be done in two days,” said Rotundo. “The judge didn’t give them much wiggle room.”
Given DOH’s lack of a public response to the guidance provided by the court and legislature Rotundo suggests the best hope for patients waiting for cannabis oil to treat epilepsy, seizure and cancer patients rests with the legislature.
“If they were going to follow the judge’s ruling then follow the judge’s ruling — propose a rule, they could have done that four weeks ago,” said Rotundo. “So what was the purpose of waiting until Dec. 15 (deadline to appeal Watkins’ ruling) and then waiting another two weeks to not propose a rule. If they have a rule and they are going to show it tomorrow then I find that behavior to be difficult to comprehend.”
