Florida, a state in which self-defense with a gun is legal, has passed a bill banning all sales of bongs, pipes, and any marijuana-related paraphernalia. Because even though 7/10 Floridians favor medical marijuana, the state’s constituency has decided it’s better to ban bongs than allow patients safe access to medicine.
So meanwhile, while 18 states (plus D.C.), have medical marijuana, Florida’s bill can’t even get a legitimate hearing and has hit a stale-mate.
Shame on us as a Legislature for not taking the opportunity to hear this bill this year,” House bill sponsor Rep. Katie Edwards (D-Plantation) said at a press conference on Monday.
Edwards introduced the bill after getting sick herself last year and speaking with cancer patients about how marijuana alleviated their suffering.
“I thought, ‘these are real people,'” Edwards told ABC Action News, “and I cannot turn a blind eye and stick my head in the sand and pretend like it’s not happening, because it is.”
The bill is named for Cathy Jordan who has been suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease since 1986.
In February, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Department staged an armed raid on the Jordans’ home, seizing 23 marijuana plants, including two mature plants Cathy was using to treat her symptoms.
Opponents like Rep. Jimmy Patronis (R-Panama City) think Cathy and other Floridians needing marijuana for medical reasons should move to a state where it’s legal, reports the News Herald.
Meanwhile an Orlando-based Democratic fundraiser John Morgan is focusing on collecting the 700,000 signatures required to get a constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana on the ballot in November 2014.
Patients in Florida like Jordan suffering and resorting to pills to help their illnesses will now go without legal medicinal marijuana for the foreseeable future. In the backwards state of Florida-where the Trayvon Martin shooting was technically “legal”-you can fire a gun if you interpret an intruder as a menace. But if you buy a ROOR, you’re a criminal. And that’s the real crime.
Source: Marijuana.Com
