"Momma bears" roam Florida Capitol seeking medical marijuana for their cubs

Momma bears. It’s taking the momma bears to end the reefer madness.

Paige Figi, Holley Moseley and Dawn Wein are among a group of women who worked the Florida Capitol the past year persuading, pressuring and pleading with lawmakers to lift a prohibition on medical marijuana and authorize the use of cannabis products they say will ease their children’s suffering and, in some cases, potentially save lives.

When they showed up at the Capitol it was to put an exclamation point on the generation-long shift in how Americans view marijuana — since the 1990s 23 states have authorized its use as medicine.

 THE LOBBYIST

Moms are effective advocates. They pluck our heart strings and strike a powerful chord: an innate desire to protect children, the weak, the vulnerable.

In the 1980s moms organized groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and changed attitudes and laws regarding alcohol and driving, and opposed efforts to decriminalize marijuana.

That was then. Today marijuana is no longer the evil weed.

Former Florida Medical Association lobbyist Ron Watson nicknamed the moms like Figi, Moseley and Wein “momma bears” after watching them in action in Tallahassee.

Watson recognized the intensity they brought to the job as the same mix of emotion, strength and resolve he saw in his wife, Dana, when their young son was fighting leukemia. Listening to their testimony he said was a life-changing experience.

“It’s funny because I felt myself in a unique position,” he said. “Not only because I am a parent that had experience their child suffering but because I have been a professional lobbyist for 25 years and represented doctors.”

Watson quit his FDA job to begin lobbying for medicinal marijuana.

The Washington Post spotted momma bears lobbying this past year outside legislative chambers in Florida, Oklahoma, Georgia, Utah, New York, North Carolina, Alabama and Kentucky.

They succeeded in Florida when the Legislature passed the Compassionate Medicinal Cannabis Act of 2014, SB 1030. The victory, though, was just a pause in the battle. Medicinal cannabis has yet to become available in Florida.

“I didn’t think this was going to be an easy process, but I also didn’t think it was going to be this hard,” said Moseley, whose daughter has epilepsy. “When I hear stories of children with epilepsy passing, reality strikes and I am overcome with fear.”

A dispute among the Florida Department of Health, growers, investors and patient advocates has held up implementation of the law. That has delayed  the availability of the cannabis products that advocates say calm epileptic seizures, ease the pain of cancer, and serve as an alternative to traditional prescription pain and cancer medications’ harmful side effects.

The legislation authorized doctors to use a low-THC strain of marijuana to treat patients. The most widely known strain is called Charlotte’s Web — named after Figi’s little girl. The Colorado resident testified on behalf of the Florida law. She talks about how epilepsy stole her child here.

Since Gov. Rick Scott signed the act into law in June there have been more than 70 hours of hearings and workshops, a lawsuit, a second proposed rule, and three more legal challenges. What hasn’t happened is the planting of Florida’s first medicinal marijuana crop.

A DOH official explained in court testimony the problem is that SB 1030 created more interest than opportunity. It authorized five licenses to grow marijuana and be part of a venture that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Although estimates are that fewer than 200,000 Florida residents qualify for cannabis medicine under the law. Speculators expect medicinal marijuana in Florida to blossom into a $780 million industry.

The working number is there are about 30 qualified nurseries with the financial backing to be part of the start up of the industry and there are five licenses available. It is clearly in the economic interest of any of the qualified nurseries to challenge a rule if it thinks the rule places their application at a disadvantage, or if they simply disagree with a provision.

“We had no idea the amount of money involved the amount of interest that came” with medicinal marijuana, Sen. Aaron Bean said about the numerous lawsuits blocking DOH from implementing the law.

A Mother’s Story

“If you can name a seizure medicine, Samuel has been on it,” said Wein, of Gulf Breeze.

Wein testified at a public hearing in February during a hearing on regulations for Florida’s Charlotte’s Web law. She was among the people who had expected cannabis oil to be available on Jan. 1, 2015.

In a soft, clear voice sounding like a librarian, Wein told a room filled with lobbyists, growers, investors and regulators she wanted to provide them with a human face for the issue they have discussed for seven months without seeming to find common ground.

Sam, her son, began having seizures when he was 5. Sam is 20 now and had to drop out of college when the seizures overpowered his medication. He spent much of 2014 in the Cleveland Clinic where 16 holes where drilled into his head to map his brain. Doctors then cut his head open and cauterized the area where they thought the seizures originated.

Wein said the surgery was somewhat successful. Sam is now on medication but the medicine is damaging his liver.

“We just want Sam to have a chance to live into adulthood and live a normal life,” said his mom. “We feel like this medication is what he needs.”

The Lawmaker

“It’s heart-wrenching and as a parent with three children myself I can’t empathize more with what they are dealing with,” Sen. Rob Bradley said of the stories he’s been told. Bradley sponsored the Charlotte’s Web law and has made its implementation a top priority for this year.

“We want the families to have all options that they can, but we have to do it in a safe and responsible way as well,” he said.

To Bradley, a former prosecutor, responsible means a low-THC law with a limited number of licenses to cultivate marijuana and tight regulation of the dispensing of cannabis medicine.

A year ago, the Senate debated Bradley’s SB 1030 for more than an hour.

“Let me be clear about something,” Bradley said in a floor speech that contained the seeds of the coming challenges.

“I oppose the legalization of marijuana. My wife Jennifer and I have spoken to our three teenagers about the danger of drug use. My kids understand the difference between the abuse of an illegal substance and the legitimate use of this plant to help suffering children. “I’m confident that Floridians understand this difference as well.”

Then for good measure, he introduced RayAnn Mosley, the 11-year old Gulf Breeze girl who was the poster child for Florida’s Charlotte’s Web.

When the bill passed 36-3, RayAnn gave Bradley a hand-drawn picture of a bright yellow sun against a blue background arched over by the words “Ray of Hope.”

The law that cleared the Legislature and was signed by Gov. Rick Scott permits the use of marijuana with less than 0.8 percent of THC, provides for five licenses to provide the medicine, and creates an Office of Compassionate Use to compile a patient registry. They would be the people  for whom doctors could order cannabis oil to treat seizures, other neurological diseases and cancer.

Rule-making 

“We are the victims of some loose language here,” Louis Rotundo said while waiting to testify during a July rule-making hearing.

Florida rule-making allows residents to participate in writing regulations. Lawmakers make law and the affected people help write the rule implementing the law. They can also legally block regulations proven to be arbitrary, capricious, vague or is an unbridled discretion of delegated legislative authority.

Rotundo is a lobbyist whose client list includes the Florida Medical Cannabis Association, which successfully sued and blocked the first set of regulations. Experienced lobbying for cities and counties on land-use and zoning regulations, he knows how to pick apart the legalese of a statute. He was on hand to warn regulators and stakeholders that their misuse of the words in the statute would lead them down the road to the courthouse.

At the moment he was animated by what appeared to confusion among regulators and growers about the distinction between a dispensary and a nursery.

“The law says what it says,” Rotundo said. “An applicant for those dispensaries will be a nursery that has been in business for 30 years and grow 400,000 plants. The application is for a dispensary to grow the drug. Dispensing is what a dispensary does at a retail location.”

DOH had interpreted the law to allow just one retail location per dispensary located on the land where the licensee grew the plant. Rotundo looked at the statue’s language for an “infrastructure” for statewide distribution and built an argument around the “plain meaning“ of the word to mean more than one retail location per license.

So it has been since July 2014.

Rotundo’s words foreshadowed a legal challenge DOH lost. It also lost a challenge to its definition of an “applicant.” It would have allowed an applicant to be an entity that included a qualified grower, and not limited applications to just nurseries in operation for at least 30 years.

Lawmakers included a 30-year rule to enable Florida nurseries to reap the benefits of a medicinal marijuana industry. The rule, in essence, gave an advantage to entities other than nurseries by allowing them to game the system. And then DOH intended to use a lottery to award the five licenses if there were more than five applicants.

“A lack of measurable criteria does not ensure the best applicant will be selected,” Rotundo told regulators, advising them to back away from a lottery.

DOH officials would later explain that a lottery was selected because there was more interest than opportunity. A random selection process would remove any hint of subjectivity in evaluating applicants and awarding licenses, or so it was hoped.

DOH issued its first rule in August and it drew three legal challenges in less than four weeks. Costa Farms of Miami, Plants of Ruskin, and the Florida Medical Cannabis Association argued among other points that a lottery to award the licenses was inconsistent with legislative intent.

In November an administrative law judge tossed the rule as “vague, fails to establish adequate standards for agency decisions and vests unbridled discretion in the agency.”

Judge David Watkins declared the rule arbitrary because the decision of whom would be awarded the five licenses was “left to chance, rather than logic and an evaluation of all necessary facts.”

With its rule invalidated, DOH missed the Jan. 1, 2015, deadline to have a regulatory structure in place for medicinal marijuana to be available and accessible in Florida.

A FATHER’S STORY

Ron Watson is among the handful of lobbyists who are constant figures in the committee, hearing and courtrooms when Florida’s medical marijuana law is on the agenda.

In January, Watson had composed a color-coded summary of a glitch bill identifying the flaws in the 2014 law and the points needing clarification to free the medicinal marijuana law from the web of hearings and lawsuits that had captured it. Since it was a glitch bill, the summary also contained a wishlist of items for expanding the law to cover more illnesses and to authorize more products and strains of marijuana.

“They know me,” he said of lawmakers, legislative staff and health professionals. “This is a small community made up of very good people. They knew what I was going through and they were very supportive. And now, after the fact, they also know what I’m going through and I am hoping to encourage them to make difficult but correct decisions. And if that means sharing the story of my son then I’m going to do it.”

“He lived eight years, six months and one day. He fought bravely for 14 months. Cancer sucks. It just does. It sucks even more … I prayed to God to take him out of his misery and if I can help just one parent, just one not to make that prayer of desperation …”

In Charlotte’s Web news stories, Watson is always one of the faces in the crowd.

“It is amazing how noncontroversial medical marijuana is when you are holding the hand of someone with terminal cancer,” Sen. Jeff Brandes said.

Brandes filed a bill lifting much of the prohibition on marijuana. He would do away with limits on THC, the number of licenses and how it is administered. Whether it’s oil, an edible, or smoked, he saids, are decisions best left to the doctor.

“I think we should trust doctors to make the best medical judgment for the individual,” Brandes said. “I want to have a free market solution on this issue and I don’t know if capping licenses is free market. I want what is sustainable, what provides research dollars and what provides a pathway for patients to access what the Legislature says is medicine.”

Brandes’ bill did not get scheduled for a hearing this session. Neither did a House bill by Rep. Greg Steube that is more restrictive than Brandes’ but less so than the current law.

Sen. Jeff Clemens has been filing medicinal marijuana bills since 2011 and his efforts, like Brandes’ and Steube’s, have been met with silence.

Remember Bradley’s floor speech about his opposition to legalizing marijuana? You can hear its echo in Senator Bean when he urged members of his Health Policy Committee to back the Bradley fix for the low-THC Charlotte’s Web law.

“I will remind you what a tremendously dangerous drug marijuana remains. We talk about all of its benefits,” Bean said this past week. “But it is also a dangerous devastating drug particularly to the mind of adolescents. It is highly addictive there are other problems this drug causes so I want us to be cautious as a state. I want us to take a baby step forward.”

The research that is available, limited because of the federal prohibition on marijuana, indicates that higher level of THC is more effective in treating a variety of illnesses and the side effects associated with medicine to treat illnesses such as cancer and HIV.

Juan Sanchez Ramos, a professor of neurology at the University of South Florida and a staff neurologist with the James Haley VA Medical Center, has studied marijuana as medicine. He wrote a research paper that found THC levels higher than 0.8 percent reduced painful spasms for multiple sclerosis patients, a 3.5 percent level of THC showed significant improvement in pain management for HIV patients, and a 9.4 percent level helped patients suffering neuropathic pain to sleep.

“There are many Class I trials supporting the efficacy of cannabis preparations containing greater than 0.8 percent THC,” said Ramos, who added that more studies are needed.

“It is almost cruel because it will not help terminally ill patients who are now forced to take pain killers that don’t provide true relief,” former Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp said of both SB 1030 and the Bradley fix. Kottkamp lobbies for Florida for Care, which backed last year’s Amendment 2 and is advocating for a much broader medicinal marijuana law.

Advocates such as Kottkamp, Brandes, Steube and Clemens say a low-THC law may not be economically sustainable.

“In our effort to not appear weak in relation to drug usage, we passed a bill that only allows for low-THC marijuana,” Clemens said. “The problem is the patients numbers for that is so small that no is going to be able to grow it and sell it and make a profit.”

“I think we can go a lot farther,” Sen. Oscar Braynon said. “We have things like tobacco, alcohol, oxycodone, all these different things that are definitely prove to be dangerous and can hurt us and we regulate them. So I think this is something that should be put in the same exact category.”

However, Bean and Bradley — Senate President Andy Gardiner’s lieutenants for medicinal marijuana — are adamant, sort of. Bradley said other states moved too quickly in lifting marijuana prohibitions and are having problems.

“There is not enough research in this area,” Bradley said when he introduced SPB 7066 to the Regulated Industries Committee. “The reason why I want to go slowly is to let the research catch up. I would want us to crawl before we walk and walk before we run, but I’m willing to have the discussion.

It’s a step forward, Bradley said, one that gives clearer directions to the University of Florida on how to proceed with researching the effectiveness of cannabis medication.

There’s a second Braynon point that Bradley said he is willing to continue discussing: The Black Farmers Association is protesting a licensing requirement that applicants have to be a nursery in operation for at least 30 years.

Thirty some years ago, they argue, black farmers were tied up in a discriminatory financing lawsuit with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Because they weren’t able to get any loans, they argue, there weren’t any black nurseries.

Braynon had filed an amendment stripping the 30-year requirement from Bradley’s glitch bill, but withdrew it when Bradley promised to keep the discussion going as the bill moves forward.

Nearly a year after lawmakers approved Bradley’s SB 1030 the rule for it sits in administrative court facing two challenges. Thursday, Judge Elizabeth W. McArthur dismissed a third challenge. McArthur ruled Thursday that the attorneys for a 4-year-old Jacksonville girl failed to establish that their client had standing to sue. McArthur wrote they had failed to prove their client is a “qualified patient” under the Compassionate Medicinal Cannabis Act of 2014 and therefore could not demonstrate that the proposed rule had an adverse affect.

The ruling is here.

The two other challenges also seem to contain similar weaknesses in their arguments and Thursday’s ruling may embolden DOH to seek their dismissals.

DOH has played its cards close to the vest during the entire process. The department’s consistent response to questions is to reiterate it is moving as quickly as possible to deliver a safe product to the waiting families.

The quickest route for to a cannabis medicine market for Florida would be for the challenges to fail and the proposed rule for SB 1030 to become effective.

If the rule is invalidated and the Legislature approves the Bradley bill, the process would be delayed until at least the measure reached the governor’s desk, and meets with his approval. Last year Scott got and signed SB 1030 in June.

The deadline to challenge the rule was March 24. It will become final 21 days after the deadline if legal obstacles are removed. DOH would be able to start awarding licenses by the end of April.

If Bradley’s bill stalls and one of the petitions is successful, then the rule-making process starts again with a series of hearings, notices and the potential for another challenge.

“I am hopeful those cases are found to be without merit and we can move forward and have the licenses awarded,” Rotundo said “That said, SB 1030 has some problems and there is room for some remedies in the areas of bonding, testing and research but the quickest way to get this moving is for the rule to stand.”

The current rule allows a medicinal marijuana industry to start, as Rep. Matt Gaetz put it, “Go around the block with training wheels.”

It does not address the concerns raised by advocates wanting higher levels of THC and is so restrictive that Florida is not considered by industry experts to be a medicinal marijuana state.

“I say this to the people of Florida,” said Sen. Joe Abruzzo who supports higher levels of THC. “If we do not go far enough with our legislation … get it on the ballot. We just had it on the ballot and barely failed. Get it on the ballot and we will see what happens when we have a mass turnout election.”