James Call
Florida House Democratic Leader Mark Pafford said Thursday he favors a Charlotte’s Web glitch bill and expanding the number of illnesses covered. Pafford also sided with the Speaker Steve Crisafulli about the Scott’s administration failure to evaluate and rank applications for sports stadium grants.
The Compassionate Medical Cannabis Act of 2014 was to have allowed Florida’s first legal marijuana crop planted by now. However, implementation of the law authorizing the processing of oil from a low-THC strain of marijuana and its use to treat children with a severe form of epilepsy has been caught in a web of hearings, workshops and a legal challenge while lobbyists hint a second one is coming by the end of the month.
Stakeholders say the measure approved this past year has flawed language that prevents regulators and stakeholders from agreeing on rules to start Florida’s medicinal marijuana industry. Pafford said Floridians overwhelming support treating marijuana as a medicine and that lawmakers should revisit the issue when they convene the 2015 legislative session in two weeks.
“One of the most expensive polls occurred in November and that poll would suggest that 58 percent of Floridians feel we need to have a bigger discussion of marijuana — medical use,” Pafford said during an unscripted discussion with Capitol reporters.
The initiative on the November ballot authorizing medicinal marijuana failed to get the 60 percent of the vote needed for implementation. However, the ballot received more votes than Scott’s re-election bid and support from an overwhelming majority of voters. Pafford said lawmakers needed not “be afraid” of the issue.
“This is a quality of life issue,” Pafford said, citing patients with chronic neurological disorders who patient advocates say no longer find relief in the use of traditional pharmaceuticals. Marijuana, though, calms their symptoms and enables them to carry on with daily life, they say.
“If they think that this can be helpful, I’m not going to say no to somebody who might benefit — 75-year-old war veterans, you know, that’s pretty sick if we’re not allowing them to benefit and have some quality of life,” Pafford said. “Certainly we need to put in standards where it is not being abused, but I think it can help more than 1,400 people (estimated number of patients eligible to be treated with cannabis under the 2014 Act).”
The Charlotte’s Web law is one of two flash points between the Scott and lawmakers sparked by the administration’s failure to implement laws passed in 2014. Thursday the Legislative Budget Commission is expected to act on four applications for money available for sports stadiums in Orlando, Jacksonville and Miami, and the Daytona International Speedway. Lawmakers directed the Scott administration to rank the applications but the Department of Economic Opportunity says its interpretation of the law does not require such analysis.
Speaker Crisafulli said Wednesday that he wanted DEO to tell him why they didn’t do their job.
Pafford said it should have been an easy task.
