Pubdate: Sat, 13 Dec 2014
Source: Daily Local, The (PA)
Copyright: 2014 Daily Local News - a Journal Register Property
Contact:  http://www.dailylocal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4704
Author: Eric Boehm, PA Independent

2015 COULD BE THE YEAR FOR LEGALIZING MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Medical marijuana legislation will get a second chance in 2015.

The bipartisan pair of state senators who pushed for legalization 
during 2014 announced this week they will re-introduce the same text 
of a bill approved by the state Senate with a 43-7 vote in September. 
The bill didn't receive a vote from the House of Representatives 
before the two-year legislative session came to a close Nov. 30.

Since it will be a new legislative session when lawmakers return to 
Harrisburg in January, the bill will have to start over again at the 
beginning of the process. But there is good reason to believe 2015 
could be the year Pennsylvania legalizes marijuana as a treatment for 
some chronic ailments.

The goal of the legislation is to provide additional options for 
those suffering from seizure-caused diseases, said state Sens. Mike 
Folmer, R-Lebanon, and Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery, in a joint statement.

"Some children suffer hundreds of seizures a day, making normal 
childhood development impossible and forcing parents to helplessly 
watch their children suffer," they said. "Prescribed narcotic 
cocktails of highly addictive and dangerous drugs have little effect 
on these disorders and often offer only a few weeks or months of 
pause in the decline of a child's health."

The Senate-passed medical marijuana bill would allow people suffering 
from cancer, epilepsy, seizures, Parkinson's disease, ALS, MS, PTSD 
and other brain and neurological diseases to use medical marijuana. 
An expected 250,000 Pennsylvanians would sign up for a medical 
marijuana license, according to an analysis from the Senate 
Appropriations Committee. A license would cost $100.

Leach and Folmer say 21 other states and the District of Columbia 
have similar laws regarding medical marijuana, though there is quite 
a bit of variety from state to state.

Getting the bill through the state Senate a second time should be a 
relatively easy task. Senate President Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, 
announced this week he was co-sponsoring the bill.

In the House, Republican leaders say they want to hold a series of 
hearings on the proposal to allow law enforcement and other interest 
groups to have a say.

There are also concerns about the creation of a new bureaucracy 
within the state government - the State Board of Medical Cannabis 
Licensing, which the bill would create to license and regulate 
marijuana growers, processors and dispensers.

If those worries can be addressed, the change in the governor's 
office should be the final piece to the legalization puzzle.

Outgoing Gov. Tom Corbett was opposed to broad legalization of 
marijuana for medical purposes. He favored a limited clinical trial 
run by a handful of hospitals instead.

Governor-elect Tom Wolf takes a different view.

"We need to legalize medical marijuana immediately," Wolf said during 
the third gubernatorial debate in October.

During the campaign, Wolf suggested the state could examine the 
possibility of recreational legalization, as has been approved in 
Colorado, Oregon, Washington and the District of Columbia. Though he 
has also said Pennsylvania ought to wait and see what happens in 
those other places where recreational use is already on the books.

Full legalization is probably farther off in the distance. No state 
has approved recreational legalization except via a ballot measure, 
and Pennsylvania doesn't have a mechanism to easily put those types 
of issues on the ballot. Even the most progressive legislative bodies 
tend to lag behind the general public on issues like this (though 
Philadelphia has essentially decriminalized the possession of 
marijuana already).

But long-suffering advocates for medical marijuana have reason to 
believe 2015 will be the year Pennsylvania joins a growing number of 
states with legal cannabis.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom