Politics
Texas House Votes To Expand State’s Medical Marijuana Program
The Texas House of Representatives approved a bill to expand the state’s limited medical marijuana program on Monday.
The legislation would add multiple conditions that qualify patients for medical cannabis under the Compassionate Use Program, which currently only allows people with intractable epilepsy who’ve exhausted their pharmaceutical options to access low-THC marijuana.
The new conditions would include cancer, autism, post-traumatic stress disorder, Alzheimerâs disease, Parkinsonâs disease, Huntingtonâs disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Tourette syndrome, Crohnâs, ulcerative colitis, muscular dystrophy and multiple sclerosis.
The measure passed 121 to 23.
#Repost @erinforyall
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Thatâs what passing a compassionate use marijuana bill looks like in the Texas House! @eddielucioiii âs HB 1365! #txlege https://t.co/JZ1QBajB2l pic.twitter.com/vNPL2tyIrg— Diego Bernal (@DiegoBernalTX) May 7, 2019
Rep. Eddie Lucio (D), the bill’s sponsor, said prior to the vote on the House floor that he was speaking for “thousands of people in our state who are too sick to function or live in constant debilitating pain.”
“Patients, caregivers, and medical professionals have been working for years to see the passage of legislation expanding access to the Compassionate Use Program,” Heather Fazio, director of Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy, said in a statement. “We are so grateful for Rep. Eddie Lucio’s leadership and for the 121 members of the House who agree that patients with debilitating medical conditions deserve the medical freedom to choose cannabis if their doctors think it can help.”
Under the current program, finding a specialist doctor to issue the recommendation has proved onerous, which is part of the reason why there are only about 600 registered medical marijuana patients in the state of about 29 million people.
The legislation would also establish a Cannabis Review Board, which would be able to amend the allowable cannabinoid ratios in medicines available to patients. Currently, there’s a 0.5 percent THC cap on medical cannabis products.
Under the legislation as initially proposed, the board would have been able to add new qualifying conditions without specific approval from the legislature, but it was amended on the floor to remove that language.
âIn working on this piece of legislation the last two years, the stakeholders really won my heart,â Rep. Mayes Middleton (R) said prior to the vote.
He said he sympathized with the plights of parents with children who suffer from conditions that would qualify them for medical cannabis under the bill and said heâs talked to veterans who have told him that âopioids ruined their lives.â
The legislation requires one more procedural vote in the House before heading to the Senate for consideration.
The chamber was also scheduled to vote on a separate medical cannabis expansion bill that would add epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and spasticity to the list of conditions that qualify patients for marijuana, but the House adjourned before getting to it. It will likely be considered on Tuesday.
Texas has been a hotbed for cannabis reform this year. Besides the medical marijuana expansion bill, which was approved by the House Public Health Committee last month, a bill to decriminalize low-level cannabis possession passed the full House last week. And legislation to legalize industrial hemp and its derivatives was unanimously approved by the House last month.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), who is in a position to block the legislation in the Senate, mischaracterized comments from the Senate Judiciary Committee chair last week, claiming that decriminalization was dead in the chamber. In fact, Sen. John Whitmire (D) said that while the legislation doesn’t have the votes quite yet, he is actively working to rally support.
Last month, three Texas House committees discussed a total of 11 cannabis-related bills in one day.
Bill To Legalize Marijuana Sales Approved By Vermont House Committee
Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.
A key Senate committee will hold a hearing next week to discuss hemp production, featuring witnesses from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In the months since hemp and its derivatives were federally legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill, there’s been strong interest in developing USDA and FDA regulations for the crop and its compounds such as CBD, and lawmakers have repeatedly pressed the agencies to speed up the rulemaking process to unlock the industry’s potential.
While the hearing notice doesn’t go into detail about what will be discussed, the meeting’s titleâ”Hemp Production and the 2018 Farm Bill”âand list of witnesses indicate that the conversation will revolve around the development of federal guidelines for hemp businesses.
.@SenateAgGOP +@SenateAgDems Announce 7/25 #Hemp Production Hearing https://t.co/b28TC831Sa #FarmBill pic.twitter.com/HZBfgx0TjG
— Sen. Ag Republicans (@SenateAgGOP) July 17, 2019
USDA Marketing and Regulatory Programs Under Secretary Greg Ibach, USDA General Counsel Stephen Vaden, FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner Amy Abernethy and EPA Assistant Administrator of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Alexandra Dunn will appear before the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry on July 25.
I am honored to be called by the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry to testify next week (7/25) on âHemp Production and the 2018 Farm Bill.â As FDA, we recognize how important the topics of hemp and cannabidiol (CBD) are to Americans. https://t.co/bHMBGth1bL
— Dr. Amy Abernethy (@DrAbernethyFDA) July 18, 2019
Other invited witnesses include Kentucky farmer Brian Furnish, National Hemp Association Executive Director Erica Stark and Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians Tribal Chairman Darrell Seki.
The Senate Agriculture Committee meeting will mark the chamber’s second cannabis-related hearing of the week. The Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs announced on Tuesday that it will meet to discuss marijuana banking issues on July 23.
FDA and USDA have both recently signaled that they were cognizant of widespread interest in creating regulatory pathways for hemp and its derivatives, with USDA stating that it planned to release an interim final rule on the products in August and FDA’s Abernethy writing that the agency is “expediting” its rulemaking process. FDA added that it hoped to release a report on its progress by early fall.
That said, heads of the departments have also tried to temper expectations. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said that USDA wouldn’t be expediting regulatory developments but that he expected them to be issued ahead of the 2020 planting seasons.
Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, meanwhile, cited policy complications that would make it difficult for the agency to create an alternative regulatory pathway for hemp-derived CBD products to be lawfully marketed as food items or dietary supplements. He said that without congressional action, it may take FDA years to establish those rules.
Separately, officials from both FDA and USDA will participate in hemp conferences in August, where they’re also expected to update stakeholders on their progress.
Senate Schedules Hearing On Marijuana Business Banking Access
Photo courtesy of Brendan Cleak.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) seized far fewer marijuana plants in 2018 compared to the previous year but made significantly more cannabis-related arrests, according to federal data released this month.
More than 2.8 million indoor and outdoor marijuana plants were seized last year as part of the DEA’s Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program. That marks a 17 percent decline from 2017 levels.
NORML first noted the DEA report, which also shows that marijuana-related arrests the agency was involved with increased by about 20 percent in a year. And while the overall number of plants that were seized dropped, DEA said that the value of the assets totaled about $52 millionâmore than twice as much as it reported the previous year.
State-level legalization efforts appear to have played a role in the declining number of plant seizures, particularly those cultivated outdoors. In the same year that retail cannabis sales started in California, DEA confiscated almost 40 percent fewer outdoor plants in the state compared to 2017.
That data point is consistent with recent research showing that legalization is associated with a decrease in the number of illicit cannabis grows in national forests, which are often targets for DEA enforcement action.
It’s not clear why there was a significant uptick in marijuana-related arrests, but those increases generally did not occur in states where legal cannabis systems were recently implemented.
For example, arrests in Kansas, where marijuana is strictly prohibited, increased by more than 3,500 percentâfrom 15 to 544âfrom 2017 to 2018. Louisiana likewise experienced a 168 percent increase in cannabis arrests.
The data covers federal law enforcement actions and does not include those of local police agencies that did not partner with the agency.
Year-over-year decreases in cannabis seizures through DEA’s eradication program have been viewed by advocates as evidence that state-level legalization systems effectively displace the illicit market, removing the incentive to illegally cultivate cannabis.
Similarly, a separate recent report from the U.S. Sentencing Commission showed that federal prosecutions for marijuana trafficking dropped precipitously in 2018âanother sign demonstrating that state-level legalization is disrupting the illicit market, advocates argue.
NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano told Marijuana Moment that “federal eradication programs are a holdover from a bygone era.”
“At a time when roughly one-quarter of the country resides in a jurisdiction where adult marijuana use is legal, and when members of Congress are openly discussing removing cannabis from the federal Controlled Substances Act, it is time for these federal anti-marijuana efforts to be put out to pasture and for federal agencies to take positions that more closely comport with cannabisâ rapidly changing cultural status in America,” he said.
DEA has also faced criticism of its cannabis eradication efforts from a non-partisan federal watchdog agency last year for failing to adequately collect documentation from state and local law enforcement partners funded through the program.
The Government Accountability Office said in a report that DEA “has not clearly documented all of its program goals or developed performance measures to assess progress toward those goals.”
At the same time that DEA is seizing fewer plants grown illicitly, it’s also setting higher goals for federally authorized cannabis cultivation for research purposes. In 2019, the agency said it hoped to grow approximately 5,400 pounds of marijuana to meet research demand, which is more than double its quota for 2018.
Legalizing Marijuana Leads To Fewer Illegal Grow Sites In National Forests, Study Finds
In one of the clearest signs of marijuana reform’s growing momentum on Capitol Hill, a Republican-controlled Senate committee has scheduled a hearing for next week that will examine cannabis businesses’ lack of access to banking services.
The formal discussion in the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs on Tuesday comes as legislation aimed at resolving the marijuana industry’s financial services problems is gaining momentum. A House cannabis banking bill that cleared that chamber’s Financial Services Committee with a bipartisan vote in March now has 206 cosponsorsânearly half the bodyâwhile companion Senate legislation has 32 out of 100 senators signed on.
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(Marijuana Moment’s editor provides some content to Forbes via a temporary exclusive publishing license arrangement.)
