A medical marijuana bill sponsored by Representative Jason Nemes (R – District 33) passed in the House last month with bipartisan support, on a vote of 59-34. But, as before when Nemes advanced a similar bill two years ago, it died in the Senate.
In 2020 it died without a vote, overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic. This year the same thing happened, but not because it was overshadowed. Because Republican leadership actively refused to support a bill that could, first and foremost, alleviate the suffering of thousands of Kentuckians who would benefit from the therapeutic properties of medical marijuana – including cancer patients and others struggling with chronic pain.
Other Republicans who express skepticism about recreational marijuana use chose to put that issue aside and support the bill because they heard from constituents who suffered from conditions that can be treated with marijuana – including Senate Judiciary Chair Westerfield (R – District 3).
But while Westerfield had the courage to back his constituents, swallow his preconceived notions, and offer his support, a majority of his colleagues in the Senate did not.
And, rather than allow those who did support it to cast their vote – and maybe pass the legislation with Democratic support as they did in the House, where the Republicans were also split – Senate leadership didn’t bring it to a vote.
It’s highly unlikely that it could have passed the Senate without a majority of Republican support anyway, unless the margin was very tight. The Republicans control 30 of the 38 seats there, after all. But if they were close to evenly split, as the Republicans were in the House, any of those eight Democratic votes could have made a difference.
The problem is, we don’t know just how close we came, or how our Senators would have voted, because majority floor leader Damon Thayer (R – District 17) decided it was “done for the year,” according to reporting from the Lexington Herald-Leader.
The paper reported that Thayer, an opponent of the measure, said he wouldn’t stand in the way of bringing the bill forward if they had the Republican votes to pass it, “but we do not have the votes in the Senate,” he told the Herald-Leader. He didn’t offer any further comments on how closely the GOP Senators were divided in their support.
Some senators, like Thayer, are open about their opposition to medical marijuana. Others, like Nemes, open about their support of it. And others, like Westerfield, have signaled how they will vote despite personal reservations.
But voters deserve to see how their individual Representative and Senators voted, so they can either continue to support those elected officials or pressure them to change their stance – as is their right. In this way the GOP’s refusal to bring the bill to a clear up or down vote, which can be recorded, is not only a jab in the eye of those patients and their loved ones, but also a poke in the eye of transparency and democracy.
It isn’t just patients and democracy they’re harming, though. They’re hurting our pocketbooks.
Legalized medical marijuana could prove to be a huge boon for the Kentucky farmers who could receive licenses to produce medical grade marijuana plants.
It could also add some much needed padding to the state’s tax coffers. Especially if they didn’t stand in the way of fully legalizing marijuana.
Since 2014, the first year the state of Colorado collected taxes on recreational marijuana, their year over year totals have continued to climb. In that first calendar year, from February through December, they collected $67,594,323. In their first full calendar year that grew to more than $130 million. By 2016 it was approaching $200 million ($193,604,810), and in 2017 it broke it, bringing in $247,368,473. Last year, in 2021, they brought in $423,486,053. In January and February alone of this year they’ve brought in another $58,920,827 – for a total to date of $2,077,853,831.
That isn’t data from some marijuana advocacy group either. It’s directly from the Colorado Department of Revenue.
That’s over two billion dollars that’s going back to the state, instead of into the coffers of a criminal cartel from outside of the country – peddling a black market product that isn’t properly regulated.
That’s millions of dollars that could go into Kentucky schools. Law enforcement. Road repairs. Bridge repairs. Millions of dollars that are being spent – either illegally and tax free here, or legally in other states, like Thayer’s own native Michigan – which has a compassionate medical marijuana law as well as legal recreational sales and use.
At the very least, Kentuckians suffering from cancer related nausea, chronic pain, and issues like anxiety and PTSD should be able to access a medicine that helps them. No one’s personal ideology should keep others from the medicine which alleviates their pain.
But if we could also admit that prohibition, now as in the 1920s, is ineffective and instead allow counties and cities to choose on their own, as they do with alcohol, how to handle recreational sales, Kentucky could be helping a lot more people with the money they bring in. Even those who choose not to imbibe.
