Jacob Ogles
The House wants to end emergency powers for regulating medical marijuana that have been in place since 2017.
The latest House Health Care budget proposal would make substantial changes to the Department of Health’s rulemaking authority regarding cannabis.
“I think it’s inappropriate to propagate rules for nearly a decade outside the sunshine and with zero transparency,” said Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican who chairs the House Health Care Budget Subcommittee.
Florida voters in 2016 approved a constitutional amendment that legalized the use of marijuana only for medical purposes. The Legislature approved a regulatory framework to implement that policy, but allowed heavy restrictions on the marketplace from the Department of Health.
In 2019, the state agency issued emergency rules for regulating dispensaries and treatment centers.
The emergency ability allowed the drafting and implementation of regulations without a standard public input process. Typically, such abilities are only put in place for 90 days while an agency undertakes a formal rulemaking process. Still, in the case of medical marijuana, the emergency has run the better part of a decade.
That has notably happened even as hemp-infused consumable goods have become more widely available in the Florida market. Unlike marijuana, which remains a controlled substance under federal law, hemp goods have remained largely unregulated. The Legislature failed to pass a regulatory framework for those products this year when negotiations between the House and Senate broke down.
Medical marijuana companies have legally challenged specific rules as arbitrary and unnecessary. Federal courts earlier this year upheld Florida regulators’ decisions regarding license fees renewal after one Florida license-holder challenged the state regulation, for example.
But House members are now taking a position in budget negotiations that it is past time for Department of Health officials to be able to make rules without public input or requirements to operate in the Sunshine.
The proposed changes from the House would adopt non-emergency powers, allowing health officials to still make new rules through a standard process.
