Bills to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in Florida have been filed for this session of the Legislature. So far, sponsors have little to show for their work…except they've now been accused of jeopardizing the cause of medical marijuana.
Dwight Bullard, the senator from Miami-Dade and the Keys, says Florida would get jobs, revenue, and a new measure of social justice if it would just join Colorado and Washington as the third state to legalize smoking marijuana for fun. He's the sponsor of a bill to do that. "The thing is, will you get a hearing on the bill", Bullard asked. "I doubt it"
Although the time for Bullard's bill may not yet have come, what is about to arrive is a referendum on allowing marihuana for medical use. Organizers got that on the November ballot by campaigning, fundraising, and denying strenuously that it would be the first step to full legalization. Orlando trial lawyer John Morgan, the godfather of the medical marijuana movement, says Bullard's bill is jeopardizing his cause.
"It gives the people the argument oh yeah, that's what he's really up to, this is really a Trojan horse", Morgan warned.
Bullard says he respects Morgan, but he doesn't see the problem. And neither does a senator who's been trying to pass a medical marijuana bill for three years. But Jeff Clemens of Lake Worth does agree that growing acceptance of pot as medicine may change some minds.
On Wednesday, a House committee made history by approving a type of non-mood-altering pot called Charlotte's Web to treat seizure conditions in children.
"Those personal stories that people have been able to see on the charlotte's web issue will alter their thinking on the overall medical marijuana issue and later on, probably, the marijuana issue as a whole as they see it’s not a scourge of society", said Clemens.
Charlotte's Web passed a very conservative committee with only one dissenting vote and even she voted no with tears in her eyes.