The Newport Daily News
Marijuana legislation approved by Senate
The state Senate Thursday overwhelmingly approved legislation that would establish medical marijuana distribution centers in the state.
The 29-6 vote came after two days of parliamentary wrangling that nearly saw the bill (S2693) killed for the year after opponents successfully amended it Tuesday. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Rhoda E. Perry, D-Providence, was so incensed at the amendment she asked that the bill be returned to committee.
Tuesday’s amendment, sponsored by Sen. Leo R. Blais, R-Coventry, would have prohibited licensed medical-marijuana patients from smoking pot in motor vehicles, even as passengers. It also would have prevented patients from smoking the drug anywhere where “children or others are exposed to secondhand smoke.”
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Proponents argued that the amendment was too broad. For example, a bed-ridden patient wouldn’t be able to smoke at home if there were others in the house, they said. If a person suffering chronic pain syndrome were to have a painful attack, they wouldn’t be able to smoke if they were around other people, other critics said.
Perry submitted an amendment Thursday that prohibited marijuana smoking “where the consumption … would adversely affect the health, safety or welfare of other individuals including, but not limited to, children.” That amendment was approved unanimously.
Perry said her amendment was not as broad and it was “highly unlikely” any approved medical-marijuana patient was going to be arrested for using the drug. The law already prohibits patients from smoking marijuana in any vehicle, she said.
Blais pushed through another amendment that would require patients to acknowledge that the use of marijuana might disqualify them from receiving an organ donation.
The legislation would charge the state Department of Health with setting up rules and regulations for the operation of up to three not-for-profit “compassion centers” that would be allowed to grow and distribute marijuana to patients with debilitating diseases. The department has issued medical-marijuana licenses to 376 patients.
Before the vote, Donald I. Abrams, chief of hematology-oncology at San Francisco General Hospital, told reporters he has been studying the medicinal effects of marijuana for nearly 20 years. Secondhand marijuana smoke is not dangerous, Abrams said, because it “has anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant activity.”
Lab research showed that people who smoke marijuana have less chance of getting lung cancer even than those who do not smoke cigarettes at all, Abrams said.
The bill now goes to the House of Representatives. A bill identical to Perry’s before it was amended is languishing in the House Health, Education and Welfare Committee and the House sponsor, Rep. Thomas C. Slater, D-Providence, said there is no support for it there. Slater said he hopes to have his bill amended into a legislative commission that will study the effectiveness of compassion centers in the states that allow them.
Send reporter Joe Baker e-mail at [email protected].