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Louisiana lawmakers have approved a bill that threatens to send people to jail for up to one year if they smoke marijuana within 2,000 feet of a school property\u2014including a college campus.<\/p>\n
The legislation from Rep. Gabe Firment (R) was passed by the House of Representatives in a 59-34 vote last week.<\/p>\n
HB 568, which now heads to the Senate for consideration, applies to people who violate drug laws \u201cwhile smoking, vaping, or otherwise abusing such controlled dangerous substance while on any property used for school purposes by any school, within two thousand feet of any such property, or while on a school bus.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) said the \u201cincredibly draconian penalties\u201d in the legislation threaten to reverse cannabis reform progress made in the state in recent years.<\/p>\n
In 2021, then-Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) signed a bill decriminalizing marijuana by removing the threat of jail time<\/a> for possessing up to 14 grams.<\/p>\n \u201cHB 568 would make cannabis use a felony in huge swaths of urban and suburban areas. Two thousand feet is a little over \u2153 of a mile,\u201d Kevin Caldwell, MPP\u201ds Southeast legislative manager, said in an action alert to supporters. \u201cIn addition to mandatory incarceration of up to a year, the bill includes a fine of up to $1,000.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an attempt to bring back the draconian penalties that Louisiana was infamous for in decades past. This bill seeks to undo years of hard work by advocates for ending jail time for minor cannabis offenses,\u201d he said<\/a>. \u201cUnder this legislation<\/a>, a student could be incarcerated for a year for consuming in a college dorm room.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Meanwhile, the Louisiana Senate also recently passed a bill to let patients with terminal and irreversible conditions use medical marijuana in hospitals<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Senate separately approved legislation to create a psychedelic-assisted therapy pilot program, using opioid settlement dollars<\/a>\u00a0to fund clinical trials aimed at developing alternative treatments such as psilocybin and ibogaine.<\/p>\n Another lawmaker also recently introduced a bill to create an adult-use marijuana legalization pilot program<\/a>\u00a0in the state to determine whether the reform should eventually be expanded and permanently codified.<\/p>\n Rep. Candace Newell (D)\u2014who has long championed legislation to end cannabis criminalization and\u00a0filed a similar legal marijuana pilot program measure last session<\/a>\u2014is sponsoring what\u2019s titled the \u201cAdult-Use Cannabis Pilot Program Regulation and Enforcement Act.\u201d<\/p>\n Getting the bill across the finish line could prove complicated in the conservative legislature, however. Newell\u2019s earlier version of the pilot program legislation didn\u2019t advance to enactment last year, and lawmakers that session also rejected other marijuana reform proposals such as\u00a0one that would have established a tax system to prepare the eventual legalization of adult-use cannabis<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post Louisiana Lawmakers Pass Bill To Send People To Jail For Smoking Marijuana Near College Campuses<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Louisiana lawmakers have approved a bill that threatens to send people to jail for up to one year if they smoke marijuana within 2,000 feet of a school property\u2014including a college campus. The legislation from Rep. Gabe Firment (R) was passed by the House of Representatives in a 59-34 voteContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"featured_media":85900,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85899"}],"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\/459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85901,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85899\/revisions\/85901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Louisiana Lawmakers Pass Bill To Send People To Jail For Smoking Marijuana Near College Campuses<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"