As the Florida Legislature prepares to convene a budget-centric special session this week, medical marijuana advocates are launching an aggressive drive to add Amendment 2 implementation to the agenda. Unresolved issues among Florida leaders continue to keep a deal from happening.

  • Florida special session on budget, June 7-9
  • Medical marijuana deal needs to be reached before it can be on agenda
  • If lawmakers don't reach a compromise by July, the Health Dept. will make the regulations

Medical marijuana is one of the major unresolved issues left over from the regular legislative session, which ended last month. Its absence from the special session call issued by Gov. Rick Scott last week struck many Capitol veterans as particularly curious, given that legislative leaders had all but committed to taking a second stab at implementation before the Amendment takes effect July 1. 

If the legislature fails to provide guidance, the regulations governing medical marijuana will be devised by the Florida Department of Health.

"It provides a lot more consensus in terms of the direction, the regulatory framework, for this state if the legislature would come up with guidance, and I think the legislature feels that way as well," said medical marijuana lobbyist Jeff Sharkey. "That's why it's kind of surprising that they're not back here really finishing the job they started and that 71 percent of the population asked them to finish."

Sharkey, who along with partner Taylor Patrick Biehl runs the Medical Marijuana Business Association of Florida, says top lawmakers remain divided over the issue that doomed implementation during the regular session: just how many dispensaries each licensed medical marijuana nursery should be permitted to operate.

House Republicans, who had initially demanded the handful of nurseries be allowed to operate an unlimited number of dispensaries, offered a cap of 100 dispensaries per nursery in the closing hours of the session.

Senate Republicans -- and many Amendment 2 supporters, who described the scheme as akin to a legal drug "cartel" -- refused the offer.

Shortly after the special session call was announced Friday, legislative leaders expressed optimism that medical marijuana would ultimately be broached.

"Although the governor has not included medical marijuana in the call for special session, the House has communicated to the that Senate that this is an issue we believe must be addressed and that we are prepared to expand the call to address the implementation of the constitutional amendment approved by the voters during the 2016 election," House Speaker Richard Corcoran (R-Land O'Lakes) told his chamber's members in a memo.

But the optimism assumes the framework of an agreement can be reached between the two chambers' leadership teams. Generally, issues aren't added to special session agendas until bills have been produced that stand a reasonable chance of passing the legislature with minimal debate.

Some lawmakers say the potential consequences of failing to act on Amendment 2 implementation should provide an incentive to get the job done. A rulemaking process driven by the Department of Health, they argue, could result in months or even years of litigation, turning voters' ire back to the legislature.

"The Department of Health is not made up of policymakers," said Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-Orlando). "It's made of up bureaucrats who need guidance from the legislature. We are lawmakers. We were supposed to give them the guidance that they needed."

The legislature's role in the process is more than theoretical: it's spelled out in the amendment. That's a fact that's not lost on any of the stakeholders as lawmakers return to Tallahassee.

"No one has said 'we don't want the special session; we don't want them to resolve it'," Sharkey said. "There's nobody who's saying that, so there's all this indication and assumption that they'll come back and resolve this issue and give the Department of Health a clear direction on where to proceed."