Legislative Update on the Marijuana Vote

Legislative Update: Bill to Legalize Marijuana

May 12, 2017

 A lot has happened in just the few days since I originally wrote this draft to discuss my “no” vote on the marijuana legalization bill in the House. After the 75-71 vote to pass the bill, it went back to the Senate, which has consistently opposed the House approach. If our session had ended last week, as expected, the issue would have been left there, to be taken up next January.

Instead, the budget stalemate extended our session and we received a counter-proposal from the Senate which accepted our language but delayed implementation by a year (to July 1, 2018) and added a Commission to develop a proposal for January for the Senate’s much broader “tax and regulate” approach. That means that if the Senate can build support, its approach could replace the House’s, for implementation next July.

The House voted to support the Senate’s counter-proposal, so it now goes to the Governor’s desk, where he is mulling on his action. If he decides to veto it (which is not a clear outcome), we will likely be re-voting in June on whether to override the veto, which requires a two-thirds majority. Since the Senate proposal passed the House on a 79-66 vote, that means there would need to be roughly 15 members to change positions, for an override to occur.

My discussion explaining the position I ended up taking remains relevant, so I will pick up here with what I drafted to send out last week:

I could have accepted legalizing adult possession and cultivation of small amounts of marijuana, if we were aggressive with the stated premise that it would not harm others. My preference was to retain a small civil penalty for both using and growing – simply to avoid a public message of normalizing use of what still is, after all, a federal crime – but that approach was rejected on the first day of debate.

So were the sponsors serious about protecting children and protecting safety on our highways, given that legalization will undoubtedly end up creating some degree of increase in overall use?

I introduced a series of amendments targeting those issues.

First was to have the misdemeanor crime that was created for providing marijuana to minors include use in the presence of minors; in other words, providing it via second-hand smoke. I don’t think it’s OK to make it legal for adults to be using pot with their kids in the room. 

I also wanted to add it as grounds for a child abuse/neglect investigation if a parent provided marijuana to a child under age 16.

In terms of marijuana and driving on our highways: Given that there is no means for an immediate test that demonstrates a blood level for impaired driving, I think there is a need for some extra thresholds of protection .

I proposed three amendments on this issue. First was that allowing active smoking of pot by a passenger while a car is being driven should be banned in the same way as smoking pot by the driver (or drinking by the driver, which is a $500 fine in current law.)

Second was a fine for possession of marijuana in a motor vehicle unless in locked container. It’s a message about having a bright line: marijuana and driving don’t mix; it should not be easily accessible.

Third was allowing active use of marijuana in a car while driving to be used as one element of evidence in an impaired driving prosecution.

Finally, I wanted to see my rights better protected. The legalization for cultivation requires that it be on property that a person is “lawfully in possession” of, or with permission from the person with lawful possession. I proposed that it require written consent.

I also believe that legalization should be restricted to use on one’s own property (or with permission of the owner.) That was my final proposed amendment.

The major “push-back” on my proposals was that they violated the concept that we should treat pot in the same way that we treat tobacco and alcohol, which are seen as being as bad, or worse, than marijuana. To me, that is a bizarre concept. We have two substances that are addictive and harmful, so we should add a third and not add precautions?

There is also voluminous medical evidence of harms that go beyond alcohol or cigarettes, including, for example, the risk of bringing on psychosis.

We have also been working over some time to increase protections to others for tobacco and alcohol use, becoming much more aggressive about second hand smoke and about drunk driving, for example. Those experiences demonstrate how hard it is to push back on something that is already legal. It’s far better to start with more protection – and ease off if demonstrated to be not necessary.

That concept of “equal treatment” also ignores the reality – for better or worse – that marijuana is still illegal under federal law!

The most amazing responses to my proposals came from the Judiciary Committee.  A member of the committee – the committee that considered the bill for months – said that the committee agreed with my concern about protecting children, but needed to look for a better means to achieve it. “We’d like to find a way to do that,” he said. He concluded that, “If we pass the bill, we should come back to these issues”

What? Fix them after passing the bill? That’s totally backwards, and is not the way we deal with any other legislation.

My proposals to add protections for children were both rejected. The proposals for locking up pot when it’s in a motor vehicle, and for smoking in the car being admissible evidence when prosecuting for impaired driving, were rejected. Limiting use to one’s private property was rejected.

A final issue raised by others was the question of whether we had done due diligence on evaluating health impacts. Our MD member of the House strongly opposed the bill, and cited a major review of research by the National Academy of Sciences.

However the bill had never been reviewed by our Health Care Committee. A motion to send it there, also failed.

So I voted “no” on the bill as a whole. The very closeness of the vote – it passed by only four votes, 75-71 – was certainly an indication that I was not the only one with these concerns.

[As an addendum I would note that when the House bill we passed came back from the Senate, it was in its original form, so it did not include the two minor amendments I offered that were endorsed by the full House. Those were to ban driving a car while pot is being smoked by a passenger in the same way as smoking by the driver (or drinking by a driver), and to require that consent to grow pot on someone else’s property be in writing.]