Following Monday’s filing of Florida bill to set up a full-fledged medical marijuana program, some of the region’s sheriffs indicated they are warming up to the idea.
“I am pleased the legislative body has started to discuss the subject,” Sarasota County Sheriff Thomas Knight said Thursday. “As I said all along, that is a much better option than putting it in the Constitution.”
That adds Knight’s sentiment to a growing list: on Tuesday — a day after Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, filed S.B. 528 — the sheriff of Pinellas County and the president of the Florida Sheriffs Association came out in favor of Brandes bill.
Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri played a key role last year in speaking against the proposed medical marijuana Amendment 2. That voter initiative won 58 percent of the vote, but failed to reach the critical 60 percent level required to ratify a state constitutional amendment.
One key player who was very vocally against Amendment 2 was Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who at the time was president of the Florida Sheriffs’ Association.
Judd “is deferring to the Florida Sheriffs Association,” said his spokewoman Carrie Eleazer Horstman. “He supports whatever the FSA supports.”
A version of the same amendment, now modified to satisfy the biggest criticisms against it, is now possibly headed for the November 2016 ballot, a presidential election year.
But passage of a medical marijuana program by Florida’s Legislature is no slam-dunk.
More than a dozen representatives last year voted against the Compassionate Care Act of 2014, which would have put an extract made from a non-euphoric cannabis hybrid into the hands of a relatively few patients, mostly severe epileptics for whom nothing else worked.
The next big break on the subject could come as soon as next week. Starting Sunday and ending Wednesday, the sheriffs association will hold its winter conference at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island.
“We will know more Tuesday or Wednesday as we need to do our due diligence discussing this critical issue with the sheriffs,” association spokeswoman Nanette Schimpf told the Herald-Tribune. “We will discuss a media statement, as there has been significant interest in our position on this bill, obviously.”
The Florida Police Chiefs Association also is working on a response and may have one next week, executive director Amy Mercer said.
The group is “reviewing the legislation that was filed and once reviewed it will go before our leadership to determine our position,” Mercer said.
Like Knight, Charlotte County Sheriff Bill Prummell told the Herald-Tribune he favors legislation over a constitutional amendment.
“I am very much in favor of providing those with the medicines they need for certain medical conditions, Prummell said. “If this means passing legislation to control the potential use and abuse of marijuana and keeping it out of our constitution, where it has no place, I will support the efforts and work with our legislators and the FSA to do so.”
Manatee County Sheriff Brad Steube could not immediately be reached for comment by the Herald-Tribune about his views on the proposed legislation.
Brandes’ bill to create “an act relating to the medical use of marijuana” is roughly similar to the proposed constitutional amendment, but veers toward being more restrictive.
The amendment now includes post-traumatic stress disorder as one medical condition meriting cannabis as a treatment, for example, while S.B. 528 does not mention that malady.
The amendment leaves the door open for medical conditions that are debilitating in the view of the patient’s physician.
Brandes’ bill lists eight specific diseases and adds “any physical medical condition or treatment for a medical condition that chronically produces one or more of the following symptoms.” Then it lists chachexia or wasting syndrome, severe and persistent pain, severe and persistent nausea, persistent seizures, or severe and persistent muscle spasms.
The eight named medical conditions are: cancer, HIV, AIDS, epilepsy, ALS, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
Another sheriff who has come out in favor of S.B. 528 is Flagler County’s Jim Manfre, whose mother suffered from cancer, which makes is the list of qualifying medical conditions for most if not all 23 states and the District of Columbia in which medical treatment using marijuana already is legal.
“As a sheriff and as the son of a cancer survivor,” Manfre said, “responsible comprehensive, medical marijuana legislation is critically important to me.”
“I hope my fellow sheriffs will see this bill in the same light and work towards consensus on this issue, which is deeply personal to many Floridians, as it is to me.”
