James Call
Patricia Nelson delivered the marching orders to the 12-member panel negotiating a regulatory structure to allow a medicinal marijuana product in Florida. The director of the Office of Compassionate Use minced few words in opening the first day of the two-day meeting scheduled to fulfill the Department of Health’s responsibility to implement the state’s Charlotte’s Web law.
“We need a rule that works, we need a rule that is as good as can be and we need a rule that will survive a rule challenge and will survive a rule challenge quickly,” said Nelson. “We had one deadline and we missed it so we need to get our act together and get moving.”
Nelson invited selected growers, medical and legal professionals and patient advocates to participate in a negotiated rule making process after a judge had invalidated DOH’s first set of regulations. Stakeholders had warned the department they would sue if DOH filed the proposal.
In a draft released Wednesday morning and the starting point for negotiations, DOH backed off requiring the cultivation of marijuana and the dispensing of cannabis oil occur at one location. The language also opens the possibility of a licensee operating more than one retail facility.
“To be clear the department is not suggesting any longer that dispensing needs to occur at the same place as the cultivation as the same place as the processing,” said Nelson, explaining the department’s thinking.
“We still think that sprawl of these type of facilities are not a good thing,” said Nelson. “What I don’t think we want is for you also to have a warehouse housing your derivative product or some other facility storing your derivative product and some other facility where you are storing maybe records and a third facility all within blocks of one another where you are actually dispensing.”
The language raised the possibility that licensees will be able to operate more than one dispensing facility.
Nelson scheduled 14 hours for the first day of negotiations and left open how long talks will continue Thursday. The panel spent more than two hours and 15 minutes discussing 20 definitions in the proposed rule Wednesday morning.
Pedro Freyre of Costa Farms, the state’s largest nursery proposed an expansion of the definition of how “authorization” for a licensee to begin specific phases of growing, processing and dispensing will be given.
“Specify what those stages will be and how the mechanics of that would work? I found that to be a little bit ambiguous than the rest of the document,” said Freyre. “I wasn’t able to find where it really sort of explains clearly what those stages would be and what the criteria at each one would be.”
“We need probably to actually talk about stages,” said Nelson. “I don’t know that the cultivation stage and harvesting stage are two different stages for purposes of authorization. So probably what we ought to talk about around the table today what are those stages.”
As Nelson and panelists talked, a DOH staff member wrote on a white marker board the points raised for further discussion. The group engaged in lengthy discussions about a dispensing organization, dispensing facility, financial statements and routes of administration as well as what is meant by authorization.
“I was nervous coming into this but now that I am here I am really excited,” said Holley Moseley, a member of the negotiating panel and one of the promoters of the Charlotte’s Web law. He daughter is a seizure patient.
“Its’ been the most beneficial of all the committee meetings that we’ve had,” Moseley said during a break. “I’m excited to see what happens at the end of the day tomorrow (Thursday). I hope that we have a final rule that everyone at the table is happy with.”
Nelson’s goal is to have a rule able to withstand a challenge ready for lawmakers to ratify when they convene the annual legislative session in March. If the group fails to meet the goal then a low-THC/high-CBD cannabis oil may not be available in Florida for epileptic children and cancer patients until 2016.
