James Call
The Florida Senate Wednesday is expected to consider a medicinal marijuana bill, but it appears efforts to allow higher-levels of THC in cannabis medicine in Florida have stalled.
“We’re in a holding pattern,” said Sen. Rob Bradley, the sponsor of a glitch bill for last year’s Charlotte’s Web law.
SPB 7066 makes several changes to the Compassionate Medicinal Cannabis Act of 2014. The low-THC law has been plagued with legal challenges blocking the production and sale of cannabis oil to treat seizures and other ailments.
SPB 7066 is less restrictive than the 2014 act and is self-executing, bypassing the rule-making process and subsequent lawsuits. To Bradley’s dismay, patient advocates have tried to use the proposal as a vehicle to increase THC levels, allow a variety of cannabis products, and authorize more illnesses to be treated.
When seven amendments were proposed this past week, Bradley pulled the bill from the Senate’s special order calendar, saying he needed to have more “conversations” with stakeholders.
When asked Tuesday what he intended to do Wednesday, Bradley said it was “too early to tell.”
Then he noted:
“As we get later into the session it becomes less and less likely to have a bill pass out of both Houses,” Bradley said.
Bradley wrote the CMCA and included a tight regulatory structure on the cultivation of marijuana and the dispensing of low-THC medicinal oil. Growers and investors have blocked implementation of the law by challenging proposed rules translating the law into a regulatory structure for a medicinal marijuana industry.
They have failed to gain Bradley’s support for their proposals. It’s informative to note that Bradley voted against a proposed gambling compromise he had written after it was amended in a committee that he chairs.
Sen. Darren Soto sponsored one of the amendments on the docket Wednesday for SPB 7066. He wants to do away with limits on THC and to allow cancer patients to use cannabis to treat pain.
Soto said he was a teenager when his grandmother was fighting cancer and he recalls she had only powerful and addictive narcotics as her only option.
“It’s going to be a tough vote to win but I think the will of the Senate must be reflected in the bill and I think this is a critical issue that needs to be vetted,” Soto said Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the Department of Health and lawyers for Masters Growers and Baywood Nurseries continue to battle via court documents in advance of a hearing Thursday challenging a proposed rule for CMCA.
DOH wants the challenge dismissed. It argues that both Master Growers and Baywood Nurseries lack standing to block the rule; the two cannot prove they would suffer harm if the rule were implemented. DOH says Master Growers cannot meet financial requirements contained in the law and that Baywood fails to meet the CMCA eligibility requirements for a license. Master Growers explained in its response how it would suffer financial harm if the rule went into effect and cited 11 court cases to rebut the seven points DOH raised.
DOH is on a winning streak, after losing the first challenge filed last fall it has prevailed on three consecutive motions to have challenges dismissed. The Master Growers/Baywood Nurseries case is the final challenge preventing implementation of the CMCA.
“When we started on SPB7066 we did not know there was a light at the end of the road with these challenges,” Bradley said. “It create less and less momentum when you see those challenges are found to be baseless.”
If Judge W. David Watkins rejects DOH’s motion then a hearing will be held Thursday morning in Tallahassee at the DeSoto Building. If Watkins rules in DOH’s favor then the rule for CMCA would go into effect in 20 days and DOH would then start accepting applications for the five licenses needed to grow marijuana legally in Florida.
