Florida’s surprising progress toward a more sensible marijuana policy –

Allowing medical marijuana could foster more sensible attitudes about decriminalization

It’s remarkable how quickly the landscape is shifting on the divisive issue of marijuana legalization. Not just in headline-grabbing states like California, Colorado and Washington, but here in Florida, too.

This month, Republican lawmakers in the Florida House allowed a hearing on medical marijuana legalization, focusing on a certain marijuana strain that may help treat seizures in children. After hearing testimony from parents with children who suffer from seizures, a top Republican lawmaker vowed to put together a bill that would permit those treatments using a marijuana strain called “Charlotte’s Web.” One Republican lawmaker, a Baptist minister, called it “using the substance wisely as God intended.”

That sort of comment from a conservative member of the Legislature’s Republican caucus would have been almost unimaginable even a few years ago. But things are happening so quickly in the state and around the country that even this development could be overtaken by other events. A push is on to legalize medical marijuana in Florida through a constitutional amendment, and the backers of the proposed amendment say they have more than enough signatures to get the measure on the ballot.

Those signatures still have to be verified, and the state Supreme Court has to approve the ballot language. But if those two hurdles are cleared, voters could vote on whether to legalize marijuana for medical use this November.

All of this is happening little more than a year after Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana use for any purpose, and at the same time that President Obama is making headlines for commenting that he believes marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol, and that the experiments with legalization in Colorado and Washington are important because of the way marijuana arrests disproportionately target African-Americans.

As the Legislature’s hearing on medical marijuana show, the politics of drug legalization are changing fast. Whether voters get a chance to speak on the issue this November, a reckoning inevitably will come. And it will be sorely needed.

Allowing medical marijuana in Florida is a common-sense choice to alleviate pain for thousands of sick people. Perhaps just as importantly, legalizing marijuana for medical purposes would create a political environment more suitable to exploring ways to decriminalize marijuana possession and regulate its recreational use at the state level.

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