NEBRASKA CITY – State senators urged caution at a town hall meeting in Nebraska City Monday regarding a medical marijuana bill before the state Legislature.
Sens. Julie Slama of Peru and Robert Clements of Elmwood said they are concerned with the permissiveness in Sen. Anna Wishart’s priority bill to adopt the Medical Cannabis Act.
Clements: “It’s very close to recreational. Calling it a medical marijuana bill is really a misnomer.”
Clements said the bill would allow a physician to prescribe marijuana for virtually any condition.
At a Jan. 25 Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Slama asked about the 12 plants a person could grow and the 300 marijuana cigarettes patients could have in their possession.
Slama: “A person simply doesn’t need several hundred days worth of marijuana on their person. I would be considered crazy if I had over a year’s supply of any other medication.”
At the committee hearing Slama summarized:
“For the sake of moving on, we’ve got section (4) is the last section before we get to the plants. That has cannabis products containing no more than 2,400 milligrams of THC. If we’re still going with a hundred milligrams of THC as a daily dose, that’s another 24 days of supply. So we’re looking at, just in sections (1) through (4), 252 plus 24, 276 days of supply, plus 375 marijuana cigarettes. That’s– that’s quite a bit, wouldn’t you say?
Karen O’Keefe answered: that if patients cultivate their own cannabis they may harvest a year’s supply.
Slama: “I’m open to the idea of medical marijuana. We can do it in a very controlled way. It’s not just going to be a stepping stone to legalized, recreational marijuana.”
Clements said passage of the bill would cause problems for law enforcement and the law does not stipulate that fees and taxation on the medical marijuana would provide tax relief.
