Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature can barely pass basic laws like tax cuts or budget plans without tripping over themselves or spiraling into intra-party screaming matches. The state legislature is so bad at writing its own laws that, as the Miami Herald astutely pointed out last week, gigantic companies like Florida Power & Light have to write entire laws for them. The current legislature is a Stygian pit of bad ideas.
So naturally, Florida voters chose in 2016 to give all those people drugs.
Last November, Sunshine State voters chose to legalize medicinal cannabis. This is a good development for folks with debilitating diseases, like cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder, or Alzheimer’s. But it’s not exactly the best-case scenario for many of Florida’s reactionary, conservative lawmakers, who are extremely good at tearing welfare programs apart and not quite as great at writing large, sweeping bills that help people.
Unfortunately, Amendment 2 — the one that legalized medicinal weed last year — gave Florida lawmakers tons of leeway to set their own rules and procedures for the medical-cannabis rollout.
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And, as pretty much everyone expected, here’s a small sampling as to why it’s been a train wreck so far, at both the city and state level:
1. Florida Representatives proposed a “legalization” bill that would outlaw smokable and edible cannabis, leading one medical-pot advocate to ask “Well, how can you ingest it?”
2. Miami Beach City Commissioner Ricky Arriola spent weeks sending out emails trying to scare residents about medical marijuana dispensaries
4. The City of Miami is basically pretending that medical cannabis is still illegal
5. Rather than open the medical-pot business up to the so-called “free market,” state legislators are basically creating a seven-company weed cartel.
credit:420intel.com
