Most Recent Florida Medical Marijuana Laws & Rulemaking Process

 

There was a ban on smokeable forms of medical marijuana in Florida. This was long been the issue in the state until last year. In 2019 the ban was overturned allowing citizens of Floridians to use medical marijuana for their diseases. The new Florida medical marijuana laws allowed medical marijuana to be used as a prescribed drug to the unhealthy to get them back in order. Some patients require marijuana to function properly every single day, especially the people who are going through terminal diseases, they need medical marijuana the most. Lifting the ban on medical marijuana helped open many doors for the citizens of Florida.

 

In this article you are going to find every there is to know about Florida Medical Marijuana acts. In the article, you will find a list including the history of legislation that led to amendment 2 Florida, questions about, Is medical marijuana legal in Florida? And the new rules that just been added to the medical marijuana system. We will go through each one of them until you get a better understanding of every aspect of this system.

 

Is Medical Marijuana Legal in Florida?

 

The answer is both yes and no. let’s focus the ‘yes’ aspect of the answer first before we start to look at the other side. People now can buy marijuana but as a part of the prescription drugs instead of just buying it off the store. Is medical marijuana legal in Florida, the answer would be yes but only for the prescribed people? The only way you can get prescription for marijuana if you are going through terminally ill diseases in your body. Now let’s focus on the other side of the answer.

 

Although people can now use medical marijuana if they are sick or going through some health problems. But the marijuana still remains illegal, this applies for sales, possession. If you have marijuana with you and it is not prescribed by the doctor, then you are looking for quite a rough time in the state. Because this would mean you are violating a law. If you want to use marijuana in the state, you must get the prescription for it, first. Otherwise, you will get locked up in the cell, for owning marijuana or selling recreational marijuana.

 

Florida Medical Marijuana Laws

 

As I stated earlier, Florida has tighter regulations on marijuana usage in its state.  There are various Florida medical marijuana laws working around medical marijuana, that prevents the citizen from using any marijuana form without a prescription. Let’s take a look at the medical marijuana legislation history to get to know the timeline better.

 

Compassionate Medical Cannabis Act

In 2014, the compassionate medical cannabis act or better known as ‘Charlotte’s web’ passed.

 

What did it do?

 

It legalized medical marijuana for seriously ill patients. If a person has cancer or epilepsy they will be able to use medical marijuana.

 

To manage this act Florida Department of Health (FDA) created the Office of Compassionate Use (OCU). OCU managed the entire state’s medical marijuana cannabis program.

 

Florida Right To Try Act

 

In 2015, Gov. Rick Scott signed this act to law.

 

What did it do?

It allowed physicians to experiment with drugs to create treatments for seriously ill patients. Even if the experiments were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. So how does it relate to marijuana? One of the experiment drugs was medical cannabis.

 

Amendment 2

In 2016, Florida voters passed the Florida Medical Marijuana Legalization Initiative or fl Amendment 2 finally saw the light of the day. The numbers were huge, over more than 70% of the voters favored Florida amendment 2.

 

What did it do?

It expanded the list of conditions to be eligible for medical marijuana. This led the OCU to changed into the Office of Medical Marijuana Use (OMMU), in this phrase, plenty of Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers (MMTC) were created. All of it was possible due to the massive success of the amendment 2 Florida act.

 

SB 182

In 2019, gov Ron DeSantis passed SB 182  into law. This took out the ban on smoking medical marijuana and allowed physicians to have the power to prescribe the drug to their patients.

 

This is the history of legislation that took place in Florida, you can see how the Florida medical marijuana laws over the time period went from tight rules to more simpler. Now you can get prescribed medical marijuana from any dispensaries in the state if your location doesn’t have any dispensaries near you. Don’t worry, you can order any number of marijuana to you via a free delivery service.

 

Qualification

 

In order to get prescribed medical marijuana, you need to be qualified through the eyes of the government. So you won’t break any law in the progress. To do that, you just need to follow 2 rules.

 

Get diagnosed by a certified physicians

And the second rule is to be actually from the state of Florida. Both permanent and temporary residency will count.

 

Senate Bill 8A defines the qualification of a patient as

 

‘A resident of this state [Florida] who has been added to the medical marijuana use registry by a qualified physician to receive marijuana or a marijuana delivery device for medical use and who has a qualified patient identification card.’

 

Req 1

Fl amendment 2 has created a list of conditions that a patient has to meet in order to get qualified for medical marijuana. If the patient is going through ALS, cancer, Crohn’s disease, Epilepsy, Glaucoma, HIV, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, PTSD, then they will be qualified for the legal drug use. The patient has to be registered by a qualified physician, the patient has to be under that physician for at least 3 months to get themselves up for medical marijuana. A qualified physician is who completed 8 hours of education course that is required to provide prescriptions to the patients.

Req 2

Under the amendment 2 Florida, you have to have a proper residency to get yourself signed up for medical marijuana. This the second requirement of the Florida medical marijuana law that you have to follow in order to get the drug. There are plenty of ways you can prove your citizenship to the state, by House Deed, Lease agreement, Utility Bill, State ID, driver’s license, Passport.

 

In Florida amendment 2 has added a lot of regulation for both the patient and the physicians to follow to have and give access to medical marijuana.

 

Recent Rules for Florida Medical Marijuana

 

Florida medical marijuana laws are currently pending before the supreme court of Florida. DOH introduced emergency rules regarding medical marijuana treatment centers(MMTC). All of this happens in December of 2019, where the DOH took an important step to regulate the MMTC centers to create emergency rules to control the behavior of MMTC.

 

What do these new emergency rules do?

 

These new rules provide further regulation of MMTC background check and renewal applications. Now that you know what the rules do to the medical marijuana system, let’s dig a little deeper to understand what exactly they do in the field.

 

Rule 64ER19-7

 

It requires the MMTC to ensure that all the employees, owners, and managers pass through a background screening before being allowed to serve at the MMTC. multiple documentation and record-keeping will be done as part of the requirement of this rule at MMTC. Under the rule, MMTC would report all the negative activities of its employees to the DOG within 48 hours.

 

Rule 64ER19-8

This Florida medical marijuana law makes the MMTC submit a renewal application with a renewal fee to the DOH. the DOH will receive the renewals in at least 30 days but no more than 60.

 

Rule 664 -4.013

 

Another rule that has been added to add pesticide use on medical marijuana. Rule 64 -4.013 states

 

“Any pesticide registered with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services may be used for the cultivation of cannabis for medical use in the State of Florida when applied in accordance with its label or labeling directions under the following conditions:”

 

One is no change, second is the pesticides have to be all registered with the United states Enviromenbmetal Protection Agency under section 3.

 

Rule 64-4.300

 

As the legal document states “This rule provides definitions necessary for interpreting certified marijuana testing laboratory rules being promulgated.”

 

It allows a certain acceptable limit on the target analysis. Any target analyze measure above its concentration limit would deem as a failure for that specific analysis. Any pesticide, herbicide, fungicide, fertilizer, synergist can be applied to plants at any stage of its cultivation or manufacturing. To increase growth, vigor, and pest resistance of the plant.

 

This Florida medical marijuana law also provides the employee at the marijuana testing laboratory to do duties including conducting analyses on analytical instrumentation, this also includes documenting the result and maintaining the testing related workspaces and types of equipment, tools. maintenance of marijuana samples is important in the analytic work area. The rule also provides a limitation to the analytical samples, a group of no more than 20 analytics samples with the same behavioral pattern should go through the testing procedure.

 

The rule also states: Set of analyses that establish, under conditions specified in the analysis Standard Operating Procedure, the relationship between values of quantities indicated by the measuring instrument or measuring system, or values represented by a material measure of a Certified Reference Material, and the corresponding values realized by standards.

 

Florida Medical Marijuana Law

 

• All of the medical marijuana dispensaries are approved by the DOH.

 

• If patients are too sick to get medical marijuana for themselves, then they would have their caregivers to do that for them. Florida law allows caregivers to operate on behalf of the patient.

 

• All the dispensaries should have at least 30 years of plant nursery. There is a certain amount of plant that these dispensaries should meet to get the green signal. The number sits at 400,000.

 

• A compassionate Use registry gets maintained that keeps records of medical cannabis patients and ordering physicians. The registry is only accessible by law enforcement, physicians, and medical cannabis dispensers. This gets used to verify the patient’s whether they are eligible for the drug or not.

 

• Fl amendment 2 also added rules such as the patients must hold a residence in Florida.

 

• Amendment 2 Florida says that the patient has to meet certain conditions to get access to medical marijuana for them.

 

• The previous record should be kept with you. If you didn’t see any success for your treatment, then it might get used.

 

• Your physician must allow you to use legalized cannabis for you. The physical should give you documentation stating that legalizing cannabis does no harm to your health. Sometimes medical marijuana would bring in more problems to your body. So it is better to get the assurance from the doctor before knocking the doors to the dispenser.

 

• You have to be registered under your physician to get qualified

 

• You need to have three months of treatment with your physician before making moves to get the low THC cannabis.

 

• If your age doesn’t go above 18, then you have to seek another physician to allow you to get the legal medical marijuana if you are above the age of 18, then you will be needing just one doctor to give you the right prescription.

 

Conclusion

 

Follow all the rules and know all the Florida medical marijuana laws that have been set around to create a smooth-running operation for all the citizens of Florida. Some of the laws will get annoying to follow. But it is better than to go for the alternative, where you could be violating the law of the state. The new rulemaking has made a lot of changes to the MMTC centers to follow stricter guidelines, and use a lot new rules to the medical marijuana testing labs. The success of Amendment 2 Florida has created a better way to deal with the problem. All Natural MD.