Election Day is quickly approaching. On Nov. 4, Florida voters will decide whether to enact Amendment 2: The Florida Right to Medical Marijuana Initiative.
The initiative’s passage allows for the medical use of marijuana, administration of marijuana by caregivers, recommendations by licensed physicians and the sale of marijuana by medical marijuana treatment centers.
As discussed in last week’s column, Amendment 2 is deeply flawed. To restate my stance, I support the legalization of medical marijuana but disapprove of Amendment 2. This opinion is supported by the effects of medical marijuana legalization in California and by analyses of Amendment 2’s fine print.
The way to determine the potential effects of Amendment 2 is not to simply hope its passage will turn out well. Instead, let’s examine the effects of similar laws in other states.
California passed a medical marijuana amendment similar to Amendment 2 in 1996. Greg Warmoth, a reporter for Orlando’s Channel 9, investigated its effect on California in November 2013.
Warmoth easily secured a physician’s certification for medical marijuana after telling the doctor, a gynecologist who opened a “pot doc” shop on the side for extra money, that he had trouble sleeping.
Because the fine print of Florida’s bill includes “other conditions” outside of debilitating diseases as valid qualifiers for medical marijuana certification, people can get medical marijuana for even small ailments like “trouble sleeping.”
Because California’s and Florida’s amendments are so similar, possession in Florida will be an easy process, and the amendment’s medical purposes may be abused for recreational uses.
Furthermore, Amendment 2 gives the Florida Department of Health a large role in creating regulations related to medical marijuana. While it is reasonable to assume FDOH will supply ample regulation to close any loopholes allowing for misuse in the amendment’s text, the amendment does not commission FDOH to create regulations to its needed extent.
Within Amendment 2’s full text, FDOH is responsible for issuing identification cards to patients and caregivers, creating standards of renewal for ID cards, creating health and safety standards for medical marijuana treatment centers and creating a regulation for how much marijuana can be purchased.
FDOH is left with no responsibility to create standards for where one can smoke medical marijuana or where one can open a medical marijuana treatment center.
Since there are no stipulations for the location of such treatment centers, a “pot doc” can open up shop next to a school or in a residential community. This, coupled with no regulation for where medical marijuana can be smoked, will create numerous problems.
Comparing marijuana to products like alcohol and cigarettes is not a valid comparison because alcohol and cigarettes have regulations on where they can be sold and where one could drink or smoke. Medical marijuana would have neither of those regulations under Amendment 2.
The issue of medical marijuana is personal for me. My mom has had chronic, progressive multiple sclerosis for more than 20 years. It is impossible for anyone who has not experienced it firsthand to conceive of the pain this disease causes. The effects of multiple sclerosis can be completely debilitating.
I have seen my mother go from walking upright to using a walker to relying on a wheelchair. I have seen her body cripple and wither under the effects of this disease.
I know the side effects of the countless medications she has used for treatment: sleepiness, fogginess, and in other cases, digestive and liver problems.
By any definition, multiple sclerosis qualifies as a debilitating disease. If Amendment 2 passes, my mom would be eligible to use medical marijuana for relief.
As unusual as it is for me to consider my mother lighting up a blunt and taking a puff, if that’s going to give her relief, I want her to get it.
However, I can’t support the legalization of medical marijuana just yet. Amendment 2 is simply too vague.
If the amendment passes, legislation following it will be reactive instead of preventative. State lawmakers are going to be kicking themselves to push out new laws that will curve the unintended consequences of Amendment 2, like the ability for people to open a medical marijuana treatment center anywhere and the ability to smoke marijuana anywhere.
Medical marijuana should be legal, and voters should be able to compassionately allow the choice for relief through medical marijuana. However, that choice should not come until a more revised and more restrictive form of Amendment 2 is proposed.
Lindsay Alexander is a UF journalism sophomore. Her columns appear on Wednesdays.
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 10/8/2014]
