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Florida Lawmakers Pass Cannabis Telehealth Bill
House Bill 387 also opens new medical marijuana cultivation opportunities for Black farmers.
Florida lawmakers passed legislation last week to allow medicinal cannabis patients to renew their medical marijuana recommendation with a physician via telehealth appointments. The measure, House Bill 387, was passed by the Florida House of Representatives on Thursday after the state Senate approved an amended version of the legislation earlier in the day. The bill, which also includes provisions to help Black farmers obtain licenses to cultivate medical marijuana, now heads to the desk of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis for consideration.
Under the bill, patients seeking treatment with medical marijuana would still be required to conduct an in-person office visit with a physician to receive an original recommendation and state-issued medical marijuana identification card. Once approved to use marijuana, however, House Bill 387 would allow patients to complete required renewal consultations with a doctor through a remote telehealth appointment. Currently, Florida state law requires patients to receive an updated recommendation to use medical marijuana every 210 days, or approximately seven months.
Medical marijuana patients in Florida were permitted to renew their medical marijuana recommendations via telehealth appointments temporarily under emergency rules put in place in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. House Bill 387 would make permanent that policy, which expired in June 2020, and allow patients to once again renew their medical marijuana authorization by visiting with their physician via a telehealth appointment.
“[The bill] would treat the use of medical marijuana just like other medicines in the state of Florida,” Republican state Representative Spencer Roach, the sponsor of the bill, said after introducing the legislation earlier this year. “We sort of had an unforced trial run with this in Florida for approximately eight months. [We] really didn’t see any problems there.”
Last week’s passage of the bill was welcomed by Kim Rivers, CEO of Trulieve, Florida’s largest medical marijuana provider with more than 120 licensed dispensaries statewide.
“We are supportive of anything that increases accessibility for medical patients,” Rivers wrote in a message to High Times.
House Bill 387 also includes provisions to help Black farmers in Florida obtain licenses to cultivate medical marijuana.
After voters passed Amendment 2, the 2016 ballot measure that legalized medical marijuana in Florida, state regulators established a vertically integrated infrastructure that limited medicinal cannabis production and sales to a few regulated companies. Under the amendment, at least one medical marijuana cultivation was supposed to be issued to a Black farmer who was a “recognized class member” in class-action lawsuits over lending discrimination by the federal government known as the Pigford litigation, according to a report from Orlando Weekly.
But under the plan, no Black farmers were licensed to cultivate medical marijuana for the state’s patients for two years. A group of Black farmers sued the state, and in September, Terry Gwynn became the first Black grower to receive a license to cultivate medical marijuana. Other farmers who applied for the license but were not successful have continued the legal action, however.
House Bill 387 authorizes up to a dozen additional licenses for Pigford class farmers. After the bill passed, lawmakers praised the legislation to bring more fairness to Florida’s medical marijuana cultivation infrastructure.
“This has been a long time coming,” said Democratic state Senator Darryl Rouson. “The Black farmers were already victimized, and this Legislature in 2017 started to make that situation right.”
“Today we’re going to make history not just because we’re going to make good on the Pigford litigation that started back in 2017, six years ago,” Roach added, “but you’re going to make history today because for the first time in the House, Representative (Angie) Nixon has spoken in favor of one of my bills.”
Nixon praised her colleagues in the House for passing the bill with the Senate’s amendments.
“This is a great deal,” Nixon said. “I’m happy that the Black farmers will have the opportunity to get a license because of it.”
House Bill 387 passed with strong bipartisan support, passing in the Senate by a vote of 38-0 on Thursday. The measure also received unanimous approval in the House of Representatives later in the day, passing by a vote of 105-0.
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/florida-lawmakers-pass-cannabis-telehealth-bill/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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