Medical Pot on the 2023 Agenda for South Carolina

Medical cannabis advocates in South Carolina are ready to go again as they hope that 2023 will finally be the year that they legalize the treatment in the state. 

Local news station WPDE reports that two bills have been “pre-filed in the South Carolina House for the 2023 legislative session [that] would legalize medical marijuana despite ongoing federal cannabis prohibition.”

One measure, per the station, is known as the Put Patients First Act and it “would authorize patients to use medical marijuana with exceptions,” while also allowing “for the opening of dispensaries across the state.”

The other, known as the South Carolina Compassionate Care Act, would authorize the use of medical cannabis while also “letting [the state department of health] control most of the process by giving out licenses to sell products, setting rules for their use of the products plus making changes to allow cannabis research,” according to WPDE.

The latter bill has the same title as a separate measure introduced last year by Republican state Sen. Tom Davis, who has advocated for medical cannabis in the Palmetto State for years. 

Under Sen. Davis’s bill, patients suffering from a host of qualifying conditions could have received medical cannabis treatment: cancer, multiple sclerosis, a neurological disease or disorder (including epilepsy), sickle cell disease, glaucoma, PTSD, autism, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, cachexia, a condition causing a person to be home-bound that includes severe or persistent nausea, terminal illness with a life expectancy of less than one year, a chronic medical condition causing severe and persistent muscle spasms or a chronic medical condition for which an opioid is or could be prescribed based on accepted standards of care.

“If you pound at the door long enough. If you make your case. If the public is asking for something, the state Senate owes a debate,” Davis told local media last January. “The people of South Carolina deserve to know where their elected officials stand on this issue.”

After the bill passed the state Senate in February, Davis applauded his colleagues.

“Even those that were opposed to the bill, I mean, they could’ve just been opposed. They could’ve ranted against it, they could’ve tried to delay things. They didn’t. They expressed their concerns, but what they then did is dug in and tried to make the bill better. And so, what you saw over the last three weeks is what’s supposed to happen in a representative democracy,” Davis said at the time.

But after the legislation won approval in the state Senate, members of the state House of Representatives voted against continuing debate on the bill in May, dashing the hopes for Davis and other medical cannabis advocates.

“We suffered a setback procedurally in the House today,” Davis said following the House’s vote last year. “I can’t cry about it. I can’t pout about it. I can’t come back and lash out and try to hurt other people’s bills. That’s not productive. I just need to find out a way to get this thing on the merits up or down in the House and that’s what I’m going to be working on.”

Davis isn’t the only one who will be clamoring for another shot at getting the proposal over the line in this upcoming legislative session. 

A group of military veterans living in South Carolina have been vocal in pushing for the legalization of the treatment in the state.

“No one has died from an overdose with cannabis ever,” Cody Callarman, a former member of the Marine corps, told the news station WACH in November. “For me, I can say, it definitely helps me to go to sleep and stay [a]sleep and alleviate a lot of nightmares.”