On Friday, a Florida judge ruled that it was unconstitutional for the state to block its medical marijuana patients from smoking cannabis. But when the state\u2019s lawyers quickly appealed the ruling, Florida medical marijuana advocates turned on the political pressure against the state\u2019s governor in an attempt to get him to drop the appeal.<\/p>\n
John Morgan, the Orlando lawyer who has led the medical marijuana effort in Florida since day one, initiated the pressure against Scott by saying he was \u201cplaying with political wildfire,\u201d according to the\u00a0Orlando Sentinel.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWhat should happen is Gov. Scott should say, enough is enough,\u201d Morgan said, while calling for the appeal to be dropped by the state. \u201cThis is plain old meanness.\u201d<\/p>\n A big motivator for Morgan is one of his clients, a woman named Cathy Jordan, who has suffered from ALS since the 1980s and who prefers to ingest marijuana by smoking. Florida voters passed a measure to legalize medical cannabis in 2016, but\u00a0lawmakers then implemented a bill<\/a>\u00a0that did not include the right to smoke cannabis \u2014 instead legalizing non-smokable cannabis products like oils, tinctures and\u00a0edibles. Morgan said if the state doesn\u2019t drop the appeal, he will cite his client\u2019s health to get an expedited appeal from the state Supreme Court.<\/p>\n \u201cHow much money is the state of Florida going to spend, how many years will go by, and then Cathy Jordan dies and doesn\u2019t get to see what we fought for?\u201d Morgan told reporters.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Morgan went on to cite the tight U.S. Senate race in Florida. Scott is term-limited, so he cannot run to be Florida\u2019s governor again, but he is currently running for the Senate.\u00a0Most polls<\/a>\u00a0have Scott trailing Democrat Bill Nelson by about four points. Morgan argued that if Scott were to drop the appeal, he might take the lead overnight.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe your decision to allow this to go on could have serious, serious ramifications in the election against Bill Nelson,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cI think Gov. Scott has the political chance to make a huge dent. Can you imagine the headlines tomorrow [if he drops the appeal]? \u2026 I think he gains five points overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n Florida for Care<\/a>, one of the organizations participating in the lawsuit to reinstate the right to smoke medical cannabis, told Cannabis Now the actions by the state have taken on a bizarre pattern.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was ridiculous that they prohibited smoking medical marijuana in the first place, and it\u2019s ridiculous that they are appealing the very clear ruling from Judge Gievers,\u201d said Director Benjamin Pollara. \u201cGov. Rick Scott has the power to drop this appeal, and he should do so immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n Marijuana Policy Project<\/a>\u00a0Legislative Counsel Kate Bell wasn\u2019t surprised by the state\u2019s move to fight back against last week\u2019s court ruling. \u201cThere\u2019s really not much to say about the appeal itself,\u201d Bell told Cannabis Now. \u201cIt would be nice if the will of the people had been followed in the first place, but given the parties\u2019 positions in the court case, I would have expected them to appeal it all the way to the Supreme Court of Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n This pressure from Florida medical marijuana advocates all comes after a whirlwind weekend, following Leon County Circuit Court Judge Karen Gievers ruling that the initial implementation of the state\u2019s medical marijuana law was unconstitutional. The\u00a0AP reports<\/a>\u00a0that, in the ruling, Gievers noted Floridians \u201chave the right to use the form of medical marijuana for treatment of their debilitating medical conditions as recommended by their certified physicians, including the use of smokable marijuana in private places.\u201d<\/p>\n Jordan, the ALS patient who first inspired Morgan to campaign for change, commented to the Orlando Sentinel after Friday\u2019s success. \u201cMany people won\u2019t smoke due to the stigma and it being against the law,\u201d she said by phone from her Manatee County home after the ruling. \u201cThis is legitimate medicine. This ruling is not just for me but for many other people.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, do you smoke your medical cannabis?<\/p>\n The post Florida Activists Threaten Gov. Scott Over Ban on Smokable Cannabis<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
On Friday, a Florida judge ruled that it was unconstitutional for the state to block its medical marijuana patients from smoking cannabis. But when the state\u2019s lawyers quickly appealed the ruling, Florida medical marijuana advocates turned on the political pressure against the state\u2019s governor in an attempt to get himContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,388,1718,687,292,53,415,3491,139,4443],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26552"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26553,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26552\/revisions\/26553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Florida Activists Threaten Gov. Scott Over Ban on Smokable Cannabis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"