Florida lawmakers approve punishing doctors who write fraudulent CBD recommendations
Apparently the Florida legislature didn’t get the memo that CBD doesn’t get you high. Currently, lawmakers are working on a CBD-only bill that would give children suffering from rare seizure disorders to access to the extract. It should be a no-brainer. But because CBD is pot-related, lawmakers are still freaked out about it being abused.
Case and point: Florida state Rep. Eric Eisnaugle, a Republican from Orlando, amended the bill in a House committee to include language making it a misdemeanor for doctors who recommend CBD to patients who aren’t really sick. Because, you know, people are just going to be lining up to get high off this stuff. Oh, wait. No, they aren’t.
Under Eisnaugle’s amendment, doctors who knowingly write a recommendation for someone who the doctor has a “reasonable belief” is faking their ailment could face up to a year in jail, a year on probation and $1,000 in fines. Not only is Eisnaugle’s amendment misguided as nobody will be getting fake CBD recommendations to get high (because they can’t), it was largely redundant as the bill already had penalties for doctors caught writing fraudulent recommendations.
Police officers would have to determine whether a doctor was in the right “state of mind” when he wrote the recommendation, a move that several lawmakers questioned.
Eisnaugle isn’t the only lawmaker in the Sunshine State with unfounded pot paranoia. State Rep. Dennis Baxley, a Republican from Ocala, voted no on the bill because he thought it was too “edgy”. He said he didn’t want Florida to be known as a stoner state, even though you can’t get stoned on CBD. Apparently helping sick children access a substance that can’t get anyone high, won’t kill anyone and could possibly end life-threatening seizures is “edgy” in Florida.
The sponsor of the CBD-only bill, state Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Republican from Fort Walton Beach, says Florida needs to take the “cautious walk forward” on the bill because the federal government is flat-out ignoring science and anecdotal evidence in front of them.
All of this might not matter, however, as Florida voters will decide this November whether or not to legalize medical cannabis in all forms for the state.