Pubdate: Mon, 19 Jan 2015
Source: Orlando Sentinel (FL)
Copyright: 2015 Orlando Sentinel
Contact:  http://www.orlandosentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/325
Note: Rarely prints out-of-state LTEs.
Author: Scott Powers

STATE POT COMMITTEE HEAVY WITH COMMERCIAL INTERESTS

Florida's rules for medical marijuana will be crafted in part by a 
12-member panel that includes Winter Garden nurseryman Bruce Knox and 
at least eight others in position to make money from the law.

The 12 make up a committee formed to help the Florida Department of 
Health determine how to select, license and regulate Florida 
companies to grow a non-euphoric cannabis, make a medicinal oil from 
it and sell it to patients.

The law, approved last year, allows patients with intractable 
epilepsy and several other medical disabilities to use the cannabis 
oil. But the department's efforts to write regulations bogged down in 
legal challenges from growers, court rulings and bureaucracy. So the 
committee was announced to negotiate rules the growers could accept.

They will meet in Tallahassee on Feb. 4-5 to create rules replacing 
those thrown out in December by Administrative Law Judge W. David 
Watkins of Tallahassee.

Five of the 12 seats on the panel were awarded to growers who could 
wind up winning one of the five regional licenses. At least four 
others are people representing other companies that could get 
involved in the budding Florida legal cannabis industry.

"I think the department has been very thoughtful and mindful to try 
to create a group that stands the best chance of creating the 
regulatory framework that is going to make it successful," said Knox, 
whose nursery founded in 1962 annually produces about 125 million 
plants, mostly seedlings for wholesale growers.

Other proponents of medical marijuana welcomed the prospect.

"We hope the formation of this committee means that [the law] will 
finally be implemented and suffering patients will be able to see 
relief in short order," said Ben Pollara, director of United For 
Care, which is pushing medical marijuana in Florida.

Other growers on the committee are George Hackney of Hackney Nursery 
Company in Quincy; Robert Wallace of Chestnut Hill Nursery and 
Orchards in Alachua; John Tipton of Plants of Ruskin in Ruskin; and 
Pedro Freyre of Miami-based Costa Farms in Miami.

A sixth committee seat went to a Colorado grower, Joel Stanley, whose 
company created the most well-known brand of cannabis oil called 
"Charlotte's Web."

His brand could become the basis of the crops grown in Florida, along 
with as many as 20 other marijuana strains available nationally that 
could meet Florida's law, according to reports the Florida Department 
of Health received during hearings last summer.

Also appointed was botanist Darrin Potter. His employer, GrowHealthy, 
is building a facility in Lake Wales it hopes can be used to grow 
marijuana for medical-marijuana products. A UCF grad, Potter was a 
cultivator and grow master for several medical marijuana faculties in 
Colorado and California, before coming back to Florida to join GrowHealthy.

Another appointee is Jill Lamoureux, a lobbyist for CannLabs, a 
product testing firm in Colorado. She also is a former cannabis 
dispensary operator who helped draft Colorado's and Washington 
state's regulations.

Holley Moseley, whose daughter RayAnn suffers dozens of seizures a 
day, was appointed as the patient advocate representative. She helped 
found Realm of Caring Florida, a Sunshine State franchise of 
Stanley's company, Realm of Caring.

The final three seats went to Miami horticulturalist and 
anesthesiologist Dr. Jeffrey Block, Tallahassee lawyer Donna Blanton 
and Office of Compassionate Use Director Patricia Nelson.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom