For the last four and a half years, I have worked – alongside innumerable supporters, like you, from all walks of life, political parties and from every corner of the state – towards the goal of passing a compassionate, comprehensive, medical marijuana law to serve hundreds of thousands of sick and suffering patients in Florida.
Last Friday, as you know, the legislature finally passed a law to implement Article X, Section 29 of the Florida Constitution, which was passed by over 71% of Florida voters.
Whatever you think about the underlying implementing language, understand that what happened last week was historic, and would never have gotten this far without your efforts.
While historic and important, the law that was passed was far from perfect.
It bans the single most common method of consuming medical marijuana: smoking. It maintains many of the onerous requirements on physicians. It maintains the business model of complete vertical integration that leaves small businesses out of the medical marijuana market in Florida. It contains new criminal penalties for violations by patients and caregivers.
But, from a patient perspective, there is significant good in the law.
First and foremost, it is a gigantic step forward towards the final goal of a truly comprehensive medical marijuana system in Florida. It is critical that we have a framework upon which to build, because this legislation is far superior to anything that DOH would have reasonably proposed in a rule making.
Beyond those big picture concerns, there are real reasons to be happy about some of the provisions contained in this legislation.
Patients and caregivers can purchase and posses up to a 10 week supply of medicine, and patients can go up to 30 weeks before having to re-certify with their physician. Truly independent lab testing standards were included, for patient quality and safety. Except for dried flower, all forms of marijuana will be available to patients, including BHO extracts (prohibited in legislation until late last week). “Chronic nonmalignant pain” was added as a qualifying condition. The marketplace for medical marijuana in Florida was expanded significantly, and will continue to grow along with the patient population. Individual MMTCs will be limited as to how many retail facilities they can open in each of five geographic regions throughout Florida, ensuring the whole state will be adequately served, not just major population centers in South and Central Florida.
I could go on, but I’ll stop there in the interest of keeping an already long email from getting even longer.
My point is, you should be proud of what we have accomplished together in seeing this through two elections, a regular legislative session, and a special session.
And for those of you asking, “what about Governor Rick Scott? Is he actually going to sign this into law?”
When asked last week if he would sign the implementing law heading to his desk, the Governor replied “absolutely.”
I know there are many advocates in this state who have worked toward this goal for far longer than I have; and I know we have a lot more work still to do making this law better and more patient friendly. But I hope you will, like I have, try and take a brief step back to reflect on the magnitude of what we have accomplished, together.
It’s also only the latest step of a process that does not end here.
In 2014, Amendment 2 faced near unanimous opposition from the Florida House, Senate, Governor, Attorney General and Cabinet, in addition to the best funded campaign ever run in opposition to a medical marijuana initiative. Despite all this, we still got within a few percentage points of passing the law that year.
In 2016, we came back with a revised amendment that cleared the Supreme Court unanimously, received the endorsement of nearly every major editorial board in the state, and ultimately received over 71% of the general election vote. No state medical marijuana initiative has ever received such a broad margin of popular support in 20 years of such campaigns being waged in the U.S.
And in 2017, we entered a legislative process in which most of the members of the majority party, in both chambers, had opposed both iterations of Amendment 2, and were philosophically inclined to be against anything having to do with the word “marijuana.” We also faced off against a veritable army of lobbyists representing the incumbent cartel of authorized marijuana growers, with only a small – but extraordinarily talented and passionate – group of registered lobbyists, led by Tracy and Frank Mayernick. The result of those efforts was the legislation that passed Friday – legislation that looked enormously different, and more patient friendly, than what either chamber had proposed on the first day of the 2017 session.
We aren’t anywhere near being done fighting for patient access in Florida. There are plenty of fights just over the horizon. But we just won a big one… a win that has been a long, long time coming.
Thank you for being a part of that victory and for allowing me to be a part of this cause.
I look forward to whatever new challenges are on that horizon. We’ve done tremendous things together, things that will have true, meaningful impacts on countless lives.
Thank you,
Ben Pollara
P.S. If you’d like to continue to help us in this fight, please contribute here.
