Utah House speaker assures Dems that med marijuana agreement wasn't an attempt to sabotage Prop 2

Democratic state lawmakers Wednesday pressed Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes to explain how voters can have confidence that a medical marijuana bill will be passed if Proposition 2 fails.

Hughes acknowledged that skeptics have questioned the motives of the state leaders and advocates who crafted a legislative answer to the clamor for a Utah medical marijuana program. But he assured legislators that the consensus bill was not a plot to derail this year’s cannabis ballot initiative.

“This is not to interrupt [Proposition 2]. This is to acknowledge it,” Hughes said to lawmakers in the Senate Office Building. “If Proposition 2 were to fail, we’d still want to move forward with a model to provide medical cannabis to patients who need it.”

Unlike Prop 2, the legislation calls for a state-centralized cannabis pharmacy that would fill orders from patients for pickup at a local health department. Five licenses for privately owned “cannabis pharmacies” would also be up for grabs. The bill tightens up the list of qualifying conditions for patients and the varieties of marijuana products that would be allowed, prohibiting most edibles.

Read more: https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2018/10/25/utah-house-speaker/