{"id":74844,"date":"2024-05-01T09:18:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-01T17:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2024\/05\/01\/south-carolina-medical-marijuana-bill-wont-receive-house-vote-by-end-of-session-committee-chair-says\/"},"modified":"2024-05-01T12:45:51","modified_gmt":"2024-05-01T20:45:51","slug":"south-carolina-medical-marijuana-bill-wont-receive-house-vote-by-end-of-session-committee-chair-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2024\/05\/01\/south-carolina-medical-marijuana-bill-wont-receive-house-vote-by-end-of-session-committee-chair-says\/","title":{"rendered":"South Carolina Medical Marijuana Bill Won\u2019t Receive House Vote By End Of Session, Committee Chair Says"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Lawmakers on a South Carolina House committee took testimony on Tuesday on a Senate-passed bill that would legalize medical marijuana<\/a> in the state, but the panel\u2019s chair says it\u2019s unlikely the proposal will actually receive a vote in her chamber by the end of the legislative session.<\/p>\n

At a roughly two-and-a-half-hour hearing, the House Medical Cannabis Ad Hoc Committee took testimony from doctors, patients and members of the public. After the hearing, however, Rep. Sylleste Davis (R), who chairs the panel, told reporters that the body is unlikely to meet again before lawmakers adjourn on May 9.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just don\u2019t have a lot of time,\u201d Davis said, according to The Post and Courier<\/a>. \u201cBut I mean, I do think this was a worthwhile effort. It certainly isn\u2019t time wasted. We learned a lot today and got some good information.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill\u2019s sponsor, meanwhile\u2014Sen. Tom Davis (R), has said he was frustrated by how long it took for his measure to be taken up by House lawmakers following its passage by the Senate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI intentionally, you know, got the Senate to move it up and move it quickly,\u201d he told SC Public Radio<\/a>. \u201cIt got passed out, I think, the first or second week in February to get it over to them in time. And, so, they\u2019ve had over two months, and it\u2019s just been sitting in committee. And, look, that is frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n

The House committee held an initial last week, taking testimony from medical experts and law enforcement<\/a>. On Tuesday, the committee opened comments to the broader public, drawing patients, veterans, medical professionals and various other advocates.<\/p>\n

There was little discussion from lawmakers themselves, though some asked questions of those who testified.<\/p>\n

Following the first speaker, for example\u2014Bill Lynch, a clinical pharmacist in Philadelphia who warned of a litany of individual health and public safety dangers that he said legalization would worsen\u2014Rep. Wendell Jones (D) asked whether the majority of the problems Lynch cited were about medical patients or recreational consumers.<\/p>\n

Lynch replied that recreational users made up the bulk of the cases with negative outcomes\u2014involving heart trouble among young adults, increased risk of psychosis and schizophrenia as well as heightened violence, he said\u2014but added: \u201cThat does not mean you cannot have some of these cardiovascular and mind-altering events happen for medically prescribed\u201d marijuana.<\/p>\n

Rep. Heath Sessions (R), meanwhile, queried Lynch about his comments that the pharmacist currently dispenses synthetic cannabinoids in his practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you mention that you can prescribe synthetic THC?\u201d the lawmaker asked.<\/p>\n

Lynch confirmed that his clinic does provide the pharmaceutical Marinol, a form of synthesized THC, and the cannabis-derived drug Epidiolex, a purified CBD product. \u201cThose two products do exist,\u201d he said, \u201cand are approved prescriptions that I do give out and dispense at the hospital. But they\u2019re the only two that are quote-unquote \u2018isolated forms of marijuana\u2019 that we use.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Passed by the Senate in February, the bill languished in the House for weeks until it was first taken up in committee earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Davis, the Senate sponsor, has pointed out that there are just a few weeks left in the session to get the bill through the full chamber before potentially going to the desk of Gov. Henry McMaster (R). Any amendments made in the House would mean that it\u2019d need to return to the Senate for concurrence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just implore you to please send [S. 423] to the House so that the full body of legislators can give it the vetting, and hopefully the support that the Senate did after six years of contentious consideration,\u201d said Margaret Richardson, a patient with trigeminal neuralgia\u2014a chronic pain disorder\u2014who\u2019s worked for years to bring medical marijuana to South Carolina.<\/p>\n

Among the public, the reform enjoys overwhelming bipartisan support in the state<\/a>, with the latest medical cannabis legalization poll finding support among 93 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of Republicans and 84 percent of independents.<\/p>\n

Broadly, the bill would allow patients to access cannabis from licensed dispensaries if they receive a doctor\u2019s recommendation for the treatment of qualifying conditions, which include several specific ailments as well as terminal illnesses and chronic diseases where opioids are the standard of care.<\/p>\n

The state Senate passed an earlier version of the legislation in 2022, but it stalled in the opposite body over a procedural hiccup.<\/p>\n

David Mangone, a legalization advocate who began his career in South Carolina before moving to Washington, D.C., remarked that \u201cversions of this bill have come up before in the statehouse, but this is really the first time where we are sitting with a change in federal status.\u201d<\/p>\n

Referring to the announcement that the Drug Enforcement Administration had given the OK to moving marijuana to Schedule III, Mangone encouraged the Senate lawmakers to \u201cread at least the summary of the 250 pages put together finding that there is a currently accepted medical use and an abuse potential lower than drugs in Schedule I and Schedule II.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two speakers\u2014one a patient with multiple sclerosis, another a 26 year old with degenerative disc disorder\u2014shared how experiences in California\u2019s legal marijuana market led them to believe that cannabis could offer more relief for their ailments than the prescription drugs they were taking.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was off of opioids within, I want to say, a month. I did not have hardly as severe withdrawal symptoms because of it,\u201d said Wade Tolleson, who began using opioids for his back pain when he was 18.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though I have doctors that will look me dead in the eye and tell me that medical cannabis would be better for me in the long run, they tell me their hands are tied,\u201d Tolleson told the panel. \u201cBasically my future looks like either living with more degenerative discs and a lot of pain or they want to do double triple fusions. At 26 I won\u2019t be able to even pick up a child.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opponents of the bill who spoke at the hearing shared stories of family members whose lives they said were destroyed by cannabis use, for example as the result of suicidal ideation.<\/p>\n

Others granted that marijuana isn\u2019t a cure-all but said patients deserve to have access to it as part of a treatment regimen.<\/p>\n

\u201cCannabis isn\u2019t a perfect medicine,\u201d said Jennifer Kovacs, a clinical pharmacist who works with the cannabis industry. \u201cBut it certainly has a better safety profile than most pharmaceuticals dispensed, including opiates and benzos. Cannabis has multi-target therapy. Pharmaceuticals do not.\u201d<\/p>\n

But critics warned that whole plant cannabis medicine, with its mixture of hundreds of compounds, departs too much from established pharmaceutical standards to be embraced as a mainstream treatment.<\/p>\n

A number of other opponents spoke against the medical marijuana proposal on religious and family-values grounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom our perspective, I want to say, first of all, that we pray for our legislators, because we know you are leaders and you\u2019re guides and, biblically, you\u2019re actually shepherds,\u201d said Steve Pettit, the president of the Palmetto Family Council, telling lawmakers that \u201cwe represent the families of the state in many ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though his wife has had multiple sclerosis and non-Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma and currently has a type of carcinoma, Pettit said, \u201cwe would be very opposed to the approach of medical marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that from a biblical perspective that a being involved in hallucinogenic drugs is a sinful behavior,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause even drunkenness is considered sinful behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here are the main provisions of the\u00a0bill<\/a>:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n