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Significant Issues Persist With Medical Marijuana Rollout

February 21st, 2019 by Jake Stofan

State senators got an earful today on the business of medical marijuana.

There are significant concerns over a lack of research, licenses and in-state growers.

It’s been nearly two year’s since lawmakers passed the law implementing medical marijuana.

Of the 185,000 active patients four out of ten are prescribed medical marijuana for chronic pain.

One out of five prescriptions are written for patients suffering from PTSD.

21 growers licenses should have been issued by now, but only 14 actually have.

Cannabis advocates say that’s hurting patients.

“Is the patient getting access to the best possible products for the best possible price? And until this program is fully evolved the answer to that is no,” said Jodi James with the Florida Cannabis Action Network.

Only four of the licenses are still held by Florida companies, most have been sold.

Growers licenses have sold for as much as $80 million, yet three license holders haven’t dispensed a single product.

“It’s largely out of state companies that are doing this,” said Senator Jeff Brandes. “There’s product shortages, there’s problems, there’s companies that aren’t growing, they’re hoarding their licenses. It’s not about patients. We need to make this about patients and wee need to make it about research.”

However there are problems on the research end as well.

No funding has reached Moffitt cancer center for eight proposed studies and Federal laws make any clinical trials nearly impossible.

“This board will not and is not able to do any sort of studies on any sort of product that is grown here in the state of Florida,” said Jamie Wilson Moffitt Cancer Center.

It’s not clear what if any legislative fixes may be proposed.

Some think the department of health could address the problems through rule making, but doh has mostly dragged its feet throughout implementation.

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