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A bill to legalize medical marijuana in South Carolina died on the House floor on Wednesday following a nuanced debate over the constitutionality of the legislative process that the measure has moved through\u2014before any discussion of the merits of the bill itself could occur. Its sponsor said he would scramble to try to find another way to keep the issue alive as the session winds down.<\/p>\n
Advocates had already expected pushback on the Senate-passed legislation sponsored by Sen. Tom Davis (R), with opponents filing more than 1,000 amendments ahead of its floor consideration.<\/p>\n
But things became even more complicated after a constitutional challenge from Rep. John McCravy (R), who raised a point of order against the Senate bill, claiming that because it involves a tax on medical cannabis, it should have originated in the House under the state constitution\u2019s provisions for legislation that raises revenue.<\/p>\n
House Speaker Pro Tem Thomas Pope (R) mulled the issue over during a lunch break and later ruled to sustain the point of order.<\/p>\n
Rep. Todd Rutherford (D) then sought to appeal the ruling, saying he planned an amendment to scrap the tax language later, but there was a subsequent motion to table his appeal, which was agreed upon by the body in a 59-55 vote, effectively killing the measure.<\/p>\n
Davis\u2019s bill passed the Senate along largely bipartisan lines<\/a> in February, after which point it moved to the House and cleared committee<\/a>.<\/p>\n The House voted 59-55 to table Rutherford\u2019s appeal on the medical marijuana bill. Here\u2019s @SenTomDavisSC<\/a> watching the vote. pic.twitter.com\/9pfHbP0R0Y<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Maayan Schechter (@MaayanSchechter) May 4, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Karen O\u2019Keefe, director of state policies at the Marijuana Policy Project, contested Pope\u2019s interpretation of the law, specifically pointing out in an email to Marijuana Moment that medical cannabis would be exempt from the state\u2019s sales tax under the bill and so the separate six percent levy used to justify Wednesday\u2019s ruling would not actually raise revenue.<\/p>\n Davis, for his part, told reporters after the procedural vote that he would work on ways to attach the provisions of his bill to separate House legislation to give it another chance to pass before the looming end of the session.<\/p>\n UPDATE: @SenTomDavisSC<\/a> spoke with us after the Compassionate Care Act was thrown out in the House.. @WSPA7<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/6ybcyw6IRH<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/PW2QrMbM5j<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Jason Raven (@JasonRaven_) May 4, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n \u201cWe suffered a setback procedurally in the House today,\u201d he said<\/a>. \u201cI can\u2019t cry about it. I can\u2019t pout about it. I can\u2019t come back and lash out and try to hurt other people\u2019s bills. That\u2019s not productive. I just need to find out a way to get this thing on the merits up or down in the House and that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to be working on.\u201d<\/p>\n Davis also said: “I need to figure out if there’s another vehicle. We still have 4 days left in the session, lots of bills on the calendar, some involving pharmacies and medical affairs,\u2026 And so I think there’s an opportunity and I’ll explore what they are.\u201d (3\/3)#sctweets<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Joseph Bustos As drafted, SB 150<\/a> would have allowed patients with qualifying conditions to possess and purchase cannabis products from licensed dispensaries. Smokable products, as well as home cultivation of cannabis by patients or their caretakers, would have been prohibited. Simply possessing the plant form of cannabis could have been punished as a misdemeanor.<\/p>\n The legislation was prefiled in late 2020 and\u00a0passed out of the Senate Medical Affairs Committee<\/a>\u00a0last March, but a lone senator blocked it from reaching the chamber floor in 2021. Since then, sponsor Davis has redoubled his efforts to get the bill across the finish line, arguing that South Carolina voters are ready for what he\u2019s repeatedly called\u00a0\u201cthe most conservative medical cannabis bill in the country.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n While the bill advanced through the Senate earlier this year, the House adopted a series of amendments in committee, meaning it would have needed to go back to the opposite chamber for concurrence before it potentially moved to the governor\u2019s desk.<\/p>\n \u2014 While more than 1,000 amendments were filed as the bill moved to the floor, advocates hoped that many of them would be dispatched with as dilatory, as occurred with prior proposed revisions in a House committee.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what SB 150 would have accomplished:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Eligible patients could purchase and possess cannabis from dispensaries, but those products could not be smokable.<\/p>\n Qualifying conditions for medical cannabis include cancer, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, glaucoma, Crohn\u2019s disease, sickle cell anemia, ulcerative colitis, cachexia or wasting syndrome, autism, nausea in homebound or end-of-life patients, muscle spasms, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Terminal patients with less than a year to live would also qualify. However, regulators would be authorized to add additional conditions in the future.<\/p>\n The bill would also allow access among patients with \u201cany chronic or debilitating disease or medical condition for which an opioid is currently or could be prescribed by a physician based on generally accepted standards of care,\u201d for example severe or persistent pain.<\/p>\n Medical marijuana would be subject to the state\u2019s six percent sales tax, and local jurisdictions would be able to levy an additional tax.<\/p>\n Rather than have conventional medical marijuana dispensaries that are in place in other legal states, the bill stipulates that there would be so-called cannabis pharmacies. The facilities would be required to have a pharmacist on site at all times, and the South Carolina Board of Pharmacy would promulgate business regulations.<\/p>\n People with felony-level drug convictions would also be prevented from participating in the new industry for a period of 10 years under the proposal.<\/p>\n In-state businesses would also receive licensing priority when the market in established, with the intent being to prevent multi-state operators from dominating the industry.<\/p>\n Under the bill, 75 percent of tax revenue after expenditures would go to the state\u2019s general fund, with another 10 percent going to drug use disorder treatment service providers, five percent going to state law enforcement, and the remainder going to cannabis research and drug education.<\/p>\n For the initial rollout, regulators would approve 15 cannabis cultivators, 30 processing facilities, a cannabis pharmacy for every 20 pharmacies in the state, five testing laboratories and four cannabis transporters. Lawmakers, rather than regulators, would be authorized to approve additional license types.<\/p>\n Local governments could ban medical cannabis businesses from operating in their jurisdictions under the amended bill, but otherwise the it says that local land use and zoning burdens \u201cshould be no greater for a cannabis-based business than for any other similar business.\u201d<\/p>\n The state Department of Health and Environmental Control would oversee licensing and other regulations of the new industry. A newly established Medical Cannabis Advisory Board would be in charge of adding or removing qualifying conditions. The board would meet at least once per year and be led by a governor-appointed chairperson.<\/p>\n Davis has championed medical marijuana in South Carolina since 2014, and at a rally earlier this year, he brought out a binder that he said contained eight years of research into the issue. He said he would use the information to \u201ctake on every single argument that has been raised in opposition to this bill, and I\u2019m going to show that they cannot stand in the way of facts and evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 He\u2019s also continued to push back against opposition to cannabis legalization from his own party, for example calling out an attack ad that was paid for by the South Carolina Republican Party.<\/p>\n The state GOP organization separately\u00a0slammed a federal legalization bill<\/a>\u00a0from U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican who represents South Carolina in Congress.<\/p>\n A former White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump also recently\u00a0called out his home state South Carolina Republican Party<\/a>\u00a0for opposing the medical marijuana bill medical marijuana. Mick Mulvaney, Trump\u2019s top aide for more than a year and a former congressman, called the legislation \u201csomething that merits discussion and reasoned analysis,\u201d even if it\u2019s not a proposal that is conventionally considered a conservative priority.<\/p>\n Davis referred to the maneuvers by his own party as \u201cthe elephant in the room\u201d on the Senate floor\u00a0as debate on the floor kicked off in January<\/a>, saying he was offended by the misinformation and planned to rebut every misleading claim the group made.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to go through every single legal argument that\u2019s been put up there\u2014lack of medical evidence, unintended social consequences\u2014and take them all up and discuss them and refute them,\u201d the senator said at the time.<\/p>\n A House subcommittee that recently advanced the medical marijuana bill separately approved another bill in March that\u00a0added marijuana to a list of investigational drugs<\/a>\u00a0that patients could lawfully access during epidemic or pandemic outbreaks.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a South Carolina lawmaker filed a bill last month that would require officials to\u00a0issue pardons for people with marijuana convictions<\/a>\u00a0on their records annually on the unofficial cannabis holiday 4\/20.<\/p>\n A poll released last February found that\u00a0South Carolina voters support legalizing medical marijuana<\/a>\u00a0by a five-to-one ratio. But the state does not have a citizen-led initiative process that has empowered voters in other states to get the policy change enacted.<\/p>\n Support for medical marijuana legalization among South Carolina residents has been notably stable, as a 2018 Benchmark Research poll similarly found 72 percent support for the reform, including nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of Republicans. Davis said last year that if the legislature didn\u2019t advance the reform, he\u2019d propose a bill to\u00a0put the question of medical marijuana legalization to voters<\/a>\u00a0through a referendum.<\/p>\n Also in 2018, 82 percent of voters in the state\u2019s Democratic primary election\u00a0voted in favor of medical cannabis legalization<\/a>\u00a0in a nonbinding ballot advisory vote.<\/p>\n Lawmakers\u00a0prefiled four marijuana measures for the 2019 session<\/a>, but they did not advance.<\/p>\n Bankers Associations From All 50 States Push Senate To Pass Marijuana Banking Reform As Part Of Large-Scale Bill<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Photo courtesy of Brian Shamblen<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The post South Carolina Medical Marijuana Bill Dies On House Floor Following Procedural Challenge<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A bill to legalize medical marijuana in South Carolina died on the House floor on Wednesday following a nuanced debate over the constitutionality of the legislative process that the measure has moved through\u2014before any discussion of the merits of the bill itself could occur. Its sponsor said he would scrambleContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":54568,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81,126],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54567"}],"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\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54569,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54567\/revisions\/54569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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(@JoeBReporter) May 4, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
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\nMarijuana Moment is already tracking more than 1,000 cannabis, psychedelics and drug policy bills<\/a> in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon supporters<\/a> pledging at least $25\/month get access to our interactive maps, charts and hearing calendar so they don\u2019t miss any developments.<\/strong>
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\nRead More: South Carolina Medical Marijuana Bill Dies On House Floor Following Procedural Challenge<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"