James Call
The Florida Department of Health has responded to stakeholders’ requests and will create a negotiated rule making committee to implement a medicinal marijuana law. A committee of seven representing various parties with an interest in the state’s Charlotte’s Web law and DOH representatives will meet Feb. 4 in Tallahassee.
“This is a positive development and I’m hopeful it gets us to where we need to be; the law has issues and regulating an industry from scratch is never easy,”” said Ron Watson, a lobbyist whose client list includes medicinal marijuana businesses and the Florida Medical Cannabis Association.
The department’s first attempt to develop rules to award five licenses to grow marijuana and dispense medicinal oil from the plant was invalidated by an administrative law judge. The FMCA was among a group which sued to block the rule arguing, among other points, it lacked measurable criteria to select licensees.
At workshops and public hearings last summer stakeholders repeatedly warned the department it was misreading the Compassionate Cannabis Act of 2014 and was inviting a lawsuit with its proposed rule. Patient advocates, growers and lobbyists expressed frustration rather than celebration when Judge. David W. Watkins ruled in their favor.
“It’s not rocket science,” said FMCA lobbyist Louis Rotundo said. “There were a lot of smart people in that room (Dec. 30 Charlotte’s Web workshop).”
Rotundo has been among those calling for the agency to include more stakeholder input in developing regulations. He also lobbies for municipalities and says groups like a stakeholders’ taskforce – different from negotiated rulemaking but both options provide more citizen’s input than a workshop – have built consensus around growth management regulations.
“We would get cities, counties, lawyers and developers all in a room and we hammer it out,” said Rotundo.
DOH intends to assemble a rulemaking committee which will include a nursery, patient, testing laboratory, an administrative lawyer along with a physician and an individual experienced with cannabis regulations in other jurisdictions.
Stakeholder input may be more critical in the department’s second attempt at rule writing. In order to comply with Judge David W. Watkins ruling that state law mandates a comparative review of competing applications and that a licensee’s expertise and financial resources can affect availability and accessibility of the medicinal oil the department expects regulatory costs to trigger a need for legislative ratification.
The Florida Legislature meets once a year for 60-days starting in March. If DOH and medicinal marijuana interest groups are unable to reach agreement when lawmakers are in session this spring then rules for Florida’s budding marijuana industry will have to wait until 2016.
