Afters California adult-use legalization, the big story from Nov 8 was battleground state Florida, which voted overwhelmingly to legalize medical marijuana with more than 70 percent of the vote.
The bad news is that theres already a lot wrong with how Florida is choosing to carryout the will of the voters.
Amendment 2,Floridas new medical marijuana law, is effective onJan. 3, 2017,but it will bewill be many months after that before the first patients receive any cannabis. Exact regulations for the cultivation and selling of which are yet to be determined, but the details may not matter: Its going to be very hard indeedfor even very sick people toacquire any cannabis at all,under initial rules proposed by the state Health Departments Office of Compassionate Use.
For starters, its available only to patients with terminal conditions that are not considered to be reversible,which, left untreated, would kill the patient within a year.
Thats good for people dying of AIDS or cancer, but not much help for anyone trying to live with chronic pain or PTSD.
Worse,the state will issueno more than six licenses to produce,transport, and distributemedicine, which cannot be provided in any form that can be smoked.
The result will be a near-monopoly of oil-makers who cannot hope to fulfill the demand, according to marijuana advocates, who claimstate health regulators are ignoring the voter mandate and working instead to merely expand the states existing allowance for low-THC oil.
To say we are skeptical is an understatement,medical marijuanaattorney Gerry Greenspoon told NBC Miami.It may actually be illegal and unconstitutional, contrary to what was passed.
Among the proposed rules that marijuana advocates sayin direct contradiction to Amendment 2:
*Patients are required to have been treated by a doctor for three months prior to that doctor recommending medical marijuana;
*Doctors must undergo eight hours of required training prior to recommending any cannabis;
These are restrictions not applied to new pharmaceutical drugs, Florida NORML executive director Karen Goldstein pointed out.
Therealso appears to be no provision for home grow in Florida. All this adds up tonext-to-no hope of anything resembling the simple access seen in California, Colorado, and other states who have successfully ...
