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Missouri: Voter Initiated Medical Cannabis Law Takes Effect

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MISSOURI: Amendment 2, the state’s voter-initiated medical cannabis access law, took effect on Thursday, December 6th. Sixty-six percent of voters approved the measure in November, while rejecting a pair of competing initiatives.

State regulators have 180 days from the law’s enactment date to make available application forms to patients seeking to register to grow and/or possess medical cannabis.

Under the program, physicians may recommend cannabis therapy at his/her discretion. Qualified patients may obtain cannabis from licensed dispensaries or grow their own. Retail cannabis sales will be taxed at four percent. Tax revenues are earmarked to fund programs to assist state veterans.

For more information, contact Justin Strekal, NORML Political Director, at (202) 483-5500 or visit Missouri NORML.

 

Businesses Poised For Legalized Medical Marijuana Are Undeterred By Failure Of Florida Referendum

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FLORIDA:  The scene was similar to a gold-rush bonanza: Cottage industries were springing up, ready to provide supplies. Seminars were taking place on how to make money off the new crop, and lots of high-falutin’ financial figures were being thrown around.

Then the bonanza became fool’s gold when Florida voters fell short Nov. 4 of passing constitutional Amendment 2, a measure to legalize medicinal marijuana.

That disappointed plenty of entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on the would-be bumper crop of pot.

Even after the measure’s defeat, people hoping to take part in the medicinal marijuana industry in Florida are not selling the farm just yet. In fact, many who were ready to take up the new industry look at the referendum’s defeat as giving them more time to refine their business models and diversify the trade.

Amendment 2 Fails: Medical Marijuana Remains Illegal In Florida

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FLORIDA:  Medical marijuana remains illegal after Amendment 2 received just 57 percent of the required 60 percent supermajority needed to pass the constitutional amendment.

If the amendment had passed, Florida would have joined 23 other states and the District of Columbia in making marijuana usage for medicinal purposes legal.

Amendment 2 was arguably one of the most hot-button topics on the ballot, with both sides spending millions of dollars to make their stance on the issue known.

Jon Mills, former speaker of the house in Florida who also wrote the amendment, said this was a close race, but it is not over.

 

What Will Voters Do? Down To The Wire For Medical Marijuana

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FLORIDA:  Amendment 2 is a toss-up instead of a shoo-in.

The poll numbers for the measure to legalize medical marijuana have been see-sawing over the past few months, but the percentage in favor has been dropping.

The latest poll Thursday showed 59 percent in favor. A poll on Wednesday showed 50 percent in favor.

That’s not good enough. Unlike typical races, the amendment needs a 60 percent super-majority to pass.

 

Florida Amendment 2, Legalizing Medical Marijuana Projected To Fail

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FLORIDA:  The constitutional amendment to legalize medical marijuana in Florida is proving to be less popular than projected by supporters who claimed that amendment would find broad support, crossing political, racial and age lines. TV ads and sheriffs speaking out against the amendment may be the major contributor to the amendment falling short.

TBT has the amendment evenly split with “only 48 percent of likely voters said they would vote for Amendment 2. Forty-four percent oppose it and 7 percent said they had not made up their minds.” The requirement for passage is sixty percent, which seems like an impossible hurdle.

“My guess today is this is not going to pass,” said David Colburn, director of the Bob Graham Center for Public Service. “It may not mean that Floridians don’t support the use of medical marijuana,” he said, but apparently many voters dislike the amendment’s wording and embedding it into the state Constitution.

Ricardo Baca at The Cannibist does have much hope. “The results of a random phone survey of 861 likely voters in Florida show that Amendment 2 doesn’t stand the best chances of passing with the needed 60 percent approval,” he says in the Oct. 28 coverage (citing a  new poll from Gravis Marketing.)

 

Medical Marijuana Is “Done” According to Latest Poll

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FLORIDA:  Last week news broke that Amendment 2 was in serious danger of not getting the necessary 60 percent in order to pass.

And now, with Election Day exactly one week away, another poll says it’s still not looking great for medical marijuana legalization.

Gravis Marketing, a PR firm based in Winter Springs, conducted its own automated phone survey and found that 50 percent would vote for the amendment, and 42 would not, with 8 percent still not sure.

This is a huge shift from July, when a Quinnipiac poll showed that nearly 90 percent of voters polled said they back the legalization of medical marijuana.

 

Medical marijuana: Florida Parents Fight To Help Children Suffering With Seizures

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FLORIDA:  Nicolas Peruyero was 8 years old, blind and unable to walk or talk when his mother saw a documentary about the benefits of medical marijuana and its promise to reduce seizures.

For a few moments, Nancy Peruyero imagined what Nicolas’ life might be like without the relentless myoclonic seizures every day. And for the first time, she allowed herself to hope, an emotion she had rarely felt since that August afternoon in 2009 when her youngest son was diagnosed with Batten disease, an unusual neurological disorder marked by seizures, loss of motor skills and mental impairment. His life expectancy with the disease is no more than 12 years. He turned 9 on Oct.2.

“We want to try medical marijuana in hopes that it will calm his seizures and help him become more alert and sleep better,” said Peruyero, 41, who first watched the CNN documentary Weed about a year ago. “We want to be able to have all our options. For us, this is a quality of life issue. What parent would not do everything they could to help their child?”

These families are faced with balancing the hope that expanded medical marijuana will become available if Florida voters pass a constitutional amendment on Nov.4 and the daunting reality that even with that approval, the marketplace could be a long time coming.

 

 

Medical Marijuana Debate Focuses On What Is An Approved Drug, And Language Of Proposed Amendment

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FLORIDA:  Voters will consider making Florida the 24th state and the first in the South to approve a comprehensive medical marijuana program, but opponents argue a synthetic form of marijuana already offers medical relief that’s controlled by the Food and Drug Administration.

The debate over medical marijuana in Florida has raged between supporters who cast it as a compassionate way to treat pain and suffering, and opponents who say it’s the opening of a Pandora’s box that cannot be controlled.

If passed, the law would allow medical use of marijuana for patients with debilitating diseases, including cancer, glaucoma, HIV, AIDS, hepatitis C, ALS, Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis. However, it also allows Florida physicians to certify it for any patient with conditions that could benefit.

The state Department of Health will set the regulations, including registering and regulating centers, dispensaries and farms, issuing identification cards to patients and caregivers — and keeping patients’ identities confidential.

 

How Florida’s Medical Marijuana Amendment Managed To Plunge South

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FLORIDA:  In April, Amendment 2 looked indestructible. Poll after poll gave it upward of 80 percent in voter approval.

Then all of a sudden the cracks began to show. Numbers dipped slightly. And by May, anybody who says he couldn’t see the medical marijuana amendment‘s steep slide coming wasn’t looking very hard.

Strong Amendment 2 polling numbers plus an end to the struggle in the Florida Legislature to pass the landmark Charlotte’s Web bill launched an entrepreneurial feeding frenzy across the state.

It was like a gold rush. But it was also a turn-off for conservative voters who felt overwhelmed, who wanted medical marijuana, but not the greed they now identified as an accompaniment.

Despite Rhetoric In Marijuana Debate, Legislature Controls Its Safety

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FLORIDA:  Here’s the little secret that neither side of the Amendment2 debate over medical marijuana is talking about: The Florida Legislature controls its fate.

You don’t hear it from opposition groups, who warn that legalizing medical marijuana will endanger children, spawn pot shops on every street corner and become the state’s next pill mill fiasco. That will happen only if the conservative Florida Legislature decides not to impose strict rules on who obtains the marijuana, who distributes it and under what conditions.

You don’t hear it from proponents, as the United for Care campaign rolls into college campuses, riding on the hopes of medically needy Floridians, and wishful recreational pot smokers.

Access to medical cannabis for those groups wouldn’t be easy, either, if the Legislature put in place a tightly controlled cultivation and dispensing system similar to one it adopted earlier this year when it legalized low-THC, high CBD strains of cannabis.