Strict limits on medical-marijuana use and on who can grow and distribute cannabis in Florida are not surviving challenges in court.<\/p>\n
More than 71 percent of Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment legalizing medical cannabis in November 2016. The amendment itself was short on specifics, leaving lawmakers, Gov. Rick Scott, and state health regulators to cook up details.<\/p>\n
Among the rules they came up with were a\u00a0ban on marijuana smoking<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the simplest and most popular form in which the drug is consumed, for both medicinal and recreational purposes \u2014 and strict limits on how many companies could cultivate cannabis.<\/p>\n Earlier this summer, an appeals court struck down the ban on marijuana smoking. A final decision will be made by the state Supreme Court, after Scott chose to appeal the lower court ruling.<\/p>\n And earlier this week, a judge dealt another blow to the cannabis status quo in Florida\u2014this one much stronger.<\/p>\n As Floridapolitics.com noted<\/a>, Circuit Judge Charles W. Dodson\u2019s ruling declared several \u201cmajor provisions\u201d of the law \u201cto be unconstitutional,\u201d including:<\/p>\n Unlike other states, Florida\u2019s medical-marijuana law was not merely a voter initiative \u2014 it was a constitutional amendment. That meant that it needed to be approved by two-thirds of voters \u2014 but it also means that the provisions contained within are even more binding.<\/p>\n Broadly speaking, because the constitutional amendment did not specifically allow for such restrictions on marijuana cultivation, sales, and use, the Legislature violated the constitution by imposing them later, Dodson ruled.<\/p>\n \u201cSuch limits directly undermine the clear intent of the amendment,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n Dodson\u2019s ruling comes in a challenge brought by a company called Florigrown, which was rejected in a bid to become \u201ca medical marijuana treatment center,\u201d the term in Florida for a vertically integrated cannabis provider.<\/p>\n Florigrown is partially owned by Joe Redner, a Tampa-area strip-club owner and the plaintiff in other cases challenging the restrictions placed on medical marijuana in Florida by the state Legislature.<\/p>\n A lower court earlier this year also ruled that Redner and other medical-marijuana patients could grow their own cannabis at home<\/a>. As with the new allowance for patients to smoke cannabis, that too is awaiting a hearing and final ruling by the state Supreme Court.<\/p>\n Florida officials \u2014 and by extension, Gov. Scott, who is facing a challenge from a pro-marijuana Democrat \u2014 have appealed Dodson\u2019s ruling, which means the current law will stay in place pending a ruling from the state Supreme Court.<\/p>\n However, the ruling does show that there is agreement in the judiciary with the contention that \u201cthe current system threatens the availability and safe use of marijuana,\u201d as Florigrown CEO Adam Elend said in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cUnder this broken system,\u201d he continued, \u201cthere\u2019s no way for the department to predict supply or calculate how many dispensaries are needed for the number of patients on the registry.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>,\u00a0do you agree that Florida\u2019s restrictions on cultivation, sales and use were unconstitutional?<\/p>\n The post Medical Marijuana Chaos Continues in Florida as Judge \u2018Eviscerates\u2019 State Law<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Strict limits on medical-marijuana use and on who can grow and distribute cannabis in Florida are not surviving challenges in court. More than 71 percent of Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment legalizing medical cannabis in November 2016. The amendment itself was short on specifics, leaving lawmakers, Gov. Rick Scott,Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,388,90,5325,415,139,4820],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28439"}],"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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28440,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28439\/revisions\/28440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Medical Marijuana Chaos Continues in Florida as Judge \u2018Eviscerates\u2019 State Law<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"