State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs expressed his opposition to Initiative 65, which would legalize medical marijuana in the state if approved in a referendum next week, dubbing it the “Wild West” of medical marijuana legislation during a Zoom meeting with reporters on Wednesday.
“If we are going to do medical cannabis, I think we should do medical cannabis the right way,” he said. “Know what we are voting for because if we vote for 65 and it passes, there will be medical cannabis and recreational cannabis widely available. It would be available, but there would be a lot of downsides if it is excessively available.”
With less than a week until the election, Dobbs stressed the importance of reading Initiative 65, which was placed on a ballot through a petition, and 65A, which lawmakers put on a ballot as an alternative measure. He said Initiative 65 would do more harm than good for the state, calling it too liberal in its application of medical cannabis.
Dobbs acknowledged that there are benefits to medical marijuana said alternatives such as CBD, a non-intoxicating oil derived from cannabis that is used for stress and pain relief, are just as sufficient.
His biggest issue with Initiative 65 is that it would be impossible to adjust the program because it would be baked into the state’s constitution.
“People are going to come back to the health department and say, ‘Hey, this is not what I wanted, can y’all fix it? Y’all need to fix it.’ But we will not be able to fix it,” Dobbs said. “Because it’s written in such a way as to almost be unregulatable. It is a Wild West version of medical marijuana that’s going to make pot available pretty much in every community.”
He noted that there will be no taxes on medical marijuana sales, likening it to tax sales on alcohol and cigarettes, and he also took issue that the legislation does not regulate where dispensaries could be located, other than to say they must be at least 400 feet away from schools and churches.
Dobbs also said that with products including marijuana-infused candy and blunts being sold in other states where medical marijuana is legal, he believes the industry is geared more towards getting people high than giving them pain relief.
“Are there some potential benefits from medical cannabis? Yeah, there are,” he said, adding that though there are studies that show medical marijuana reduces opioid use, there are just as many studies that show marijuana use leads to other drug use.
If passed, the initiative calls for the complete medical marijuana program to be up and running by July 1, 2021, and Dobbs said that would be challenging because oversight of the program will fall squarely to the State Health Department, adding that he would rather focus on the coronavirus pandemic.
Dobbs hung his hat on Initiative 65A because of its structure and the fact that the Health Department would only be charged with regulating the cannabis.
“At least if we had a 65A alternative if you wanted medical marijuana, you could at least have it structured in a way that allowed for evolution,” he said. It would allow for correction of any sort of missteps that go through the process. It would allow for more input and how it’s operated.”
