Leon County circuit court Judge Karen Gievers ruled on Tuesday that banning smokable marijuana is unconstitutional, lifting the stay placed on it by Gov. Rick Scott after her initial ruling on May 25.
After the Department of Health filed an appeal of her initial ruling, Orlando attorney John Morgan filed an appeal of the stay and represented two patients with terminal illnesses and ultimately convinced the judge that smokable medical marijuana is a necessity for patients with debilitating medical conditions.
The stay will be officially lifted on June 11.
Morgan is not a fan of “#SlickRick” and believes that his efforts to keep smokable medical marijuana out of reach for Floridians is playing with “political wildfire.”
“Every day you waste taxpayers’ money with this frivolous appeal sick people, veterans, cops, firefighters and cancer patients suffer!” Morgan wrote in a Twitter post on Tuesday. “Where is your compassion man?”
As evidenced by the 2016 ballot initiative, 72 percent of Floridians support medical marijuana.
Gov. Rick Scott and his administration have until Monday to set rules that will allow patients to smoke medical marijuana. Prior to this ruling, the only legal formats in which medical marijuana can be consumed are edibles (though none are being sold yet), vaporization, or by ingesting cannabis oil.
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This article appears in Jun 6-12, 2018.