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Appeals Court Blocks ‘Homegrown’ Marijuana In Florida
May 2, 2018
Siding with the state Department of Health, an appeals court Tuesday at least temporarily blocked a Tampa businessman from being able to grow marijuana as he seeks to prevent a relapse of lung cancer.
The 1st District Court of Appeal reinstated a stay of a Leon County circuit judge’s ruling that would allow Joe Redner to grow his own pot for a treatment known as “juicing.”
Circuit Judge Karen Gievers last month ruled that Redner is entitled grow and possess marijuana for juicing under a 2016 constitutional amendment that broadly legalized medical marijuana in Florida.
The Department of Health appealed the ruling, triggering an automatic stay. But Gievers then lifted the automatic stay, spurring lawyers for the state to quickly ask the Tallahassee-based appeals court to reinstate the stay.
The appeals court Tuesday issued a one-page order reinstating the stay, which will remain in place as the court considers the appeal of Gievers’ underlying ruling that Redner should be allowed to grow his own marijuana.
“After this panel’s preliminary review of the full wording of the constitutional amendment, we determine that appellee (Redner) did not sufficiently demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits as required to justify vacating the automatic governmental stay,” Tuesday’s order said. “However, we do not intend to preclude full review of the issues on appeal by the merits panel (of the appeals court).”
Redner, who made his fortune as a strip-club owner, filed the lawsuit last year as the state carried out the 2016 constitutional amendment. While the state has faced a series of legal challenges, it has designed a regulatory system that involves licensing limited numbers of businesses to grow, process and sell medical marijuana.
Redner’s doctor ordered a juicing treatment that uses live marijuana plants to prevent a relapse of stage 4 lung cancer, according to court documents. Emulsification, or juicing, of the “biomass of the marijuana plant” was determined to be “the most effective way” for Redner “to get the benefit of medical marijuana,” according to Gievers’ initial ruling last month.
Gievers’ ruling was narrowly tailored to Redner. But in arguing last month that the stay should remain in place while an appeal moves forward, attorneys for the Department of Health argued that the ruling “opens the door for plaintiff and other qualified patients to grow medical marijuana unchecked from any state regulation.”
“In other words, the effect of the final judgment is to grant civil and criminal immunity to any one of the thousands of qualifying patients in Florida who may wish to grow and use medical marijuana as plaintiff has been authorized to do by this (Gievers’) court,” the department’s attorneys, Jason Gonzalez and Amber Stoner, wrote in an April 16 document. “The only way to prevent the proliferation of unregulated homegrown marijuana is to maintain the status quo while the appellate court reviews the propriety” of Gievers’ interpretation of the 2016 constitutional amendment.
by Jim Saunders, The News Service of Florida
Comments
13 Responses to “Appeals Court Blocks ‘Homegrown’ Marijuana In Florida”
I dont know why people like Don , want to take away freedoms from others and only want more regulation.
i agree Don Neese, even Abe Lincoln said so:
“…The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”
I voted against the legalization of Marijuana due to my personal beliefs. But, Floridians voted for it.
Floridians also voted against same sex marriage. In both cases the courts have informed Florida citizens our votes don’t count.
Thomas Jefferson had a fear that to much power was in the hands of the courts and that one day America would be held captive to a “Judicial Tyranny”.
Welcome to the New America.
I feel like our cops would be more useful in the schools….or helping Social Services address child endangerment reports. Why are we spending money on jail time for marijuana?
REGARDING:
“Big Pharmaceuticals will lose millions and billions of dollars of their medications that’s killing people they don’t care they are in it for the money
Notice that this assumes the pharmaceutical companies are trying to block this when nothing here has supported that claim.
Slander and libel based on prejudice. Not pretty. Maybe they actually ARE in the business just to enrich themselves at the suffering of others, but maybe they are not.
There is no reason to make that assumption, especially since they all have families and friends who would also suffer and die. Maybe they aren’t tens of thousands of monsters
David for assuming humanity in humans
Thanks Mike money means more to these people than human life they are lowlifes
Such control freaks. Can’t people just grow normal pot, so they will not buy this jacked up stuff on the stree?
Until somebody gets sick with cancer, they will never understand that medical pot has nothing to do with getting “high”, rather the cabinoids in pot are showing remarkable promise on treating pain, nausea, and increasing numbers of benefits as studies which in the past only wanted to show problems with the medicine as big pharm and the alcohol industry did not want recreational pot to be approved, so they fought sick people with cancer. Sorry, history will show how absurd from the beginning the war on pot has been. With the failure of opiates and their horrible side effects and social decay, one would think the citizens of the State of Florida would come first before lobby groups…..money talks and relief of pain walks.
I’m a cop, locally. Legalize it and get it over, I voted twice now to legalize it. Im allergic to the odor, I get major hay fever when I smell it but the medical use out weighs the dangers of it. It should basically have similar laws to alcohol sales and same restrictions for driving while impaired.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if Jason Gonzalez and Amber Stoner one day needed this medicine for themselves.
^^^^ I agree @barrineau.resident and @mike
Big Pharmaceuticals will lose millions and billions of dollars of their medications that’s killing people they don’t care they are in it for the money if marijuana helps me I don’t care what the law says I’m going to take it government Pharmaceuticals are Crooks and thieves
gov: nawww, boy, see, ya gotta buy from our suppliers, we don’t go fer nonna dat grow yer own, we might miss some taxes on dat, money money, dolla dolla bill y’all!