Up in smoke: THC caps for adult-use Marijuana dead this Session
The legislation sought to impose potency limits in the event voters choose to legalize the product.
An effort to cap THC levels in marijuana if Florida voters legal it for adult personal use is dead this Legislative Session.
The Senate Health Policy Committee bill (SB 7050) emerged earlier this month in the upper chamber. The effort to cap delta-9 caps had moved out of its first stop on a 7-3 vote.
But it never found space on a Senate Fiscal Policy agenda. That committee’s final meeting is Tuesday morning.
Just as that committee declined to consider a controversial defamation bill, the THC caps appear to have burned out before advancing to the Senate floor.
A companion bill (HB 1269) had made it through all committee stops in the House, but with similar language, not identical.
Since the Senate bill made it through at least one committee stop in the Senate, the upper chamber technically could take up the House bill for consideration, but only after the legislation passes off the floor of the lower chamber.
But Senate President Kathleen Passidomo has signaled she would want a Senate committee vetting any House bills taken up. There are new just days left in the 60-day Session, and no more Senate committee meetings are expected that could hear the bill.
House sponsor Rep. Ralph Massullo, a Lecanto Republican, confirmed to POLITICO that the bill is dead this year. “I believe the product we crafted was sound,” he told the outlet.
The bill was considered as the Florida Supreme Court considers whether an Adult Personal Use of Marijuana constitutional amendment will appear on the ballot in the fall. Safe & Sound Florida has collected enough signatures to qualify. While Attorney General Ashley Moody has argued the measure complies with all requirements of state law, Gov. Ron DeSantis has said he believes the high court will approve the ballot language.
Massullo’s legislation would have put caps on THC levels in the event voters approve marijuana for personal use. His bill would have said marijuana in smokable form could have a THC potency no greater than 30%. The legislation would prohibit multiserving edibles from containing more than 200 milligrams of THC and a single-serving edible from containing more than 10 mg.
Any other products could not have a THC potency of greater than 60%.
The House bill also would have removed a sunset provision in current law that repeals the current medical marijuana program law effective six months after a marijuana or cannabis constitutional amendment is adopted.
