Florida: Smoke ‘Em (At Your Own Risk) If You Got ‘Em

How do you get around Floridas silly ban on smoked marijuana? It appears putting a WARNING: NOT FOR SMOKING label on cannabis flower works just fine.

Florida is such a weird place the legal marijuana there is not for smoking.

Yes, Florida lawmakers, with a straight face, have prohibited the states medical cannabis patients from smoking the medicine they currently receive from one of the states seven licensed marijuana producers.

So it was only a matter of time before one of them had a stroke of genius and began offering their patients marijuana in pure, unadulterated (and smokeable) whole flower form butnot for smoking officially.

But if you were to smoke some

Florida voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana last in November. Their reward for also helping Donald Trump to the White House has been the political limbo in which the states potential $1 billion cannabis industry has since been lost.

State lawmakers had a limited time windowto craft rules for how cannabis would be grown and sold;a last-minute squabble over how many retail licenses would be issued (and ergo, how much competition there would be) was too much drama for lawmakers, who adjourned their legislative session with the cannabis question unanswered.

In the meantime, sick people in Florida can access legal weed via one of the seven existing companies approved in 2014 and last year to cultivate and distribute low-and-no-THC weed: varieties with THC, more producers and much wider access were supposed to be part of the new rules.

That weed is legally supposed to be vaporized, not smoked. As a result, it has been sold in canisters, cartridges and other formats that dont lend themselves to being rolled up, tucked behind an ear and passed around.

But on Tuesday, one of the states providers Truelievebegan offering whole flower for sale, along with the caveat (with all the sincerity of a head shop informing you that these, ahem, decorative water pipes are for tobacco only, ahem) that thee flowers are not for smoking.

But they could be

Kim Rivers, Trulieves CEO, has a legitimate reason for selling whole flowers: They are more medicinal. After all, the extraction process often removes cannabinoids from the final product as well as much of cannabiss flavorful, aromatic terpenes, which recent studies have shown may have as much to do with cannabiss final effect as cannabinoid ratios.

FromTallahassee.com:

Whole-leaf products are critical for patients seeking the entourage effect that results from consumption of whole-flower marijuana, she said ...