Florida lawmakers are looking to make medical marijuana more affordable, but at the same time, they’re also scrapping any hope of home grow or recreational marijuana and cracking down on hemp.
A bill that sought to allow medical marijuana patients to grow their own plants and legalize marijuana for recreational use was heavily watered down in its first hearing in the Florida House Thursday.
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Now, the legislation solely focuses on reducing costs for patients by requiring them to renew their cards every two years, instead of every year, and entirely waiving the $75 renewal fee for veterans.
“It certainly does help in the medical marijuana space, and it certainly helps veterans,” State Representative Michelle Salzman (R-Cantonment) said in the bill’s first committee hearing.
Read: Florida Republicans sponsoring marijuana expansion bills, including home grow
The bill has the support of marijuana advocates like Jodi James with the Florida Cannabis Action Network.
“When you’re talking about every other cost going up, we’re really excited about making medicine more available to people on a fixed income and particularly our veterans,” James said.
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But James argued other bills making their way through the legislative process this year threaten to increase costs on the closest products to recreational marijuana currently available to Floridians - hemp.
A duo of bills moving in the House would create new regulations for and impose a 60 percent wholesale tax on hemp products, the same rate levied on tobacco products.
“The only way for us to pay for the program, the regulation, the enforcement is to have some sort of money coming in for that,” Salzman, who is sponsoring the hemp bills, said.
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James argued, while she’s happy to see costs cut for medical patients, ignoring recreational and cracking down on hemp sends the message lawmakers aren’t listening to the 56 percent of Florida voters who supported the effort to legalize recreational marijuana this past November.
“As opposed to giving us legalization, they’ve actually given us prohibition 2.0,” James said.
The Florida Senate has not yet made any moves in the marijuana space, but a bill imposing new regulations on hemp products is teed up for a vote on the chamber floor.
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