Advocates anxious to see GOP marijuana bill

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – A report nearly two weeks ago that Tennessee Republican legislators were about to offer up a medical marijuana bill raised hopes of a breakthrough among some activists in the state.

Speculation was that the bill would be more comprehensive than anything the GOP had previously been willing to consider. That is, in all likelihood, the case. However, when the bill failed to materialize early last week as expected, and word circulated that a lobbyist for a relatively unknown group was helping to write the bill, the speculation began to take on a different tone.

Not much information is available on the group paying Tennessee lobbyist David McMahan to help craft the House and Senate versions of the bill, sponsored by Rep. Ryan Williams, R-Cookeville, and Sen. Steven Dickerson, R-Nashville, as HB1284 and SB1248, respectively.

McMahan was hired by TennCanGrow LLC, which is run by semi-retired healthcare industry businessman and executive Richard F. “Ted” LaRoche.

Siegenthaler Public Relations was also hired to field questions on the bill, as well as questions regarding TennCanGrow, a Murfreesboro-based operation formed in August whose business is listed on a lobbying expense report as “health and healthcare, botanical pharmaceutical growth, manufacture and sales.”

Amy Siegenthaler-Pierce told The Leaf-Chronicle, “TennCanGrow is an investment group of concerned Tennesseans who are supporting the efforts that were started last year to make the medical benefits of medical cannabis available, in a strictly controlled way, to the many Tennesseans who are suffering with debilitating disease.

“TennCanGrow has looked at the other states like New York and Illinois that are doing this the right way, and they want to make sure that Tennessee does it the best way.”

That sounds like a conservative approach. And it is, according to Dickerson, an anesthesiologist from Nashville who believes the political climate in Tennessee demands an incremental approach to the medical marijuana (MMJ) issue.

Eleventh-hour effort

Feeding dissatisfaction among anxious activists in Tennessee is that the MMJ legislation is being offered through a “caption bill” fairly late in the legislative game, and no one has seen what it might contain.

A caption bill addresses some part of the law related to the topic in question. Lawmakers can then call for an amendment to that caption bill.

In this case, the existing bill in both legislative bodies, as introduced, permits an electronic format for the annual TennCare report on the use and cost of opioids and controlled substances in the program. David Powell of Siegenthaler PR said the amendment proposed by Williams and Dickerson uses the existing bill as a “placeholder” while the language of the MMJ amendment is being worked out, at which time the amendment will actually become the bill.

That’s confusing to many, who would like to see the language up front to know what to agree with or object to beforehand. But Dickerson said the issue is enormously complex, both medically and politically, and he only received the bill in his hands three weeks ago from Sen. Mark Green, R-Clarksville, who he said was uncomfortable with the bill as originally written.

Green, a physician, has said he passed the bill to Dickerson, whose district, he felt, was more open to it.

“I’ve spent the last three weeks learning everything I can about the subject,” Dickerson said. “It has to be organized, vetted and then voted on in both houses, so I’ve been up to my eyeballs in it.

“Both Mark and I are in agreement that we need ‘guardrails.’ The difference is, I’m the one who has to come up with the guardrails and he’ll see if they’re suitable for his purposes.”

Green has said that if what he considered proper controls were in place, he would support the bill as a prime co-sponsor.

Growing body of evidence

Green told The Leaf-Chronicle last week he didn’t want to see a loose set of rules that sent Tennessee in the direction that Colorado and other states have taken.

Regarding that statement, Dickerson said, “We have very similar goals with this bill.”

Like Green, Dickerson, also a physician, said he has been swayed by a growing body of literature demonstrating beneficial effects of cannabis derivatives in the treatment of various conditions, though he does not support recreational use.

“However,” Dickerson said, “it has been difficult to study due to federal classification as a Schedule I drug (no accepted medical uses). So there is a difficulty assessing the various forms of delivery. Sometimes it’s smoked, sometimes it’s ingested, sometimes it’s an oil. What will become clear in the future are things like dose-response curves. But even with the literature being somewhat limited, there is sufficient evidence right now to support its use in a limited number of cases.”

Of greatest interest to MMJ advocates are the kinds of medical conditions that will be addressed in the final bill.

Dickerson said discussions, which have expanded and narrowed the list “on a day-by-day basis,” have included cancer, HIV/AIDS, spinal cord injuries with “spasticity” (including from multiple sclerosis), Crohn’s disease and intractable forms of epilepsy.

Of particular note to Fort Campbell soldiers, veterans and their families, while PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) has been discussed, Dickerson said, it is not currently on the list.

“There are a lot of people that can be helped by this,” Dickerson said, “and I’d like to help them all today. But I do believe that doing this incrementally is the way to do it. If we try to reach for all the diagnoses possible right now, it would be a really heavy lift.”

Nationwide shift in support

Of TennCanGrow’s involvement in helping write the bill, Dickerson said, “All bills have their genesis somewhere. This is not at all unusual in the world of legislation to have something brought by lobbyists. I believe TennCanGrow started this, and I took this up because I think it’s a really important public policy initiative.”

Longtime Nashville lobbyist Rick Williams was hired to help push last year’s Democrat-led effort, HB1135, named Koozer-Kuhn, sponsored by Rep. Sherry Jones, D-Nashville.

Jones told The Leaf-Chronicle that Williams was hired by MMJ activist Paul Kuhn, a former naval officer, Nashville investment adviser and past national chairman of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws).

Koozer-Kuhn was named symbolically for then-2-year-old Piper Koozer and the late Jeanne Kuhn. Piper suffers from Aicardi syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that causes severe infantile spasms. Jeanne Kuhn used marijuana to control cancer pain prior to her death in 1996.

The Koozer family moved to Denver, Colorado, early last year to get medical marijuana for their daughter, joining numerous other Tennessee “marijuana refugees.”

Jones said her bill was the basis for this year’s Republican version, though Powell said the GOP version is a completely separate and more conservative approach.

“I would say it’s a conservative bill,” said Dickerson of his MMJ legislation, which is being offered up in a political climate much different from what existed a year ago.

“If you look at the trends right now,” Dickerson said, “a couple other states have legalized it. Georgia passed it this week, and their governor is likely going to sign it, the federal government has taken strides toward not interfering with states with medical cannabis laws. They’ve sort of backed out of it.

“Now, I don’t know if they’ll give us a stamp of approval at the federal level. But I do think we’re in kind of a gray area where we can either take ownership of this and set our own laws and do this the Tennessee way, or we run the risk of having the federal government coming in a few years down the road and saying, ‘This is how it’s going to be, boys.’”

‘Too hot an issue’

On the other side of the aisle, Jones has repeatedly watched her own efforts at MMJ legislation going down to defeat in committee year after year. But after last year’s defeat, she predicted, correctly, that the Republicans would come in with their own bill.

“I knew last year that one of them would take my bill and pass it themselves this year, because it was becoming too hot an issue to keep being a ‘no’ on and getting away with it,” Jones said.

“Too hot” in this case doesn’t mean too dangerous to deal with politically. It refers to rapidly warming public opinion that consistently shows around 75 percent support for some kind of medical cannabis legalization. Even in one of the reddest of red states, where Republicans hold the governor’s office and a super-majority in the legislature, the numbers are hard to ignore.

“The thing about it is,” Jones said, “the things they’re trying to pass are so small. However, Faison (Rep. Jeremy Faison, R-Cosby) told me he was going to amend his bill to make CBD (cannabidiol) oil available for anyone with epilepsy, not just children.”

CBD is a non-intoxicating, low-THC marijuana derivative shown to be effective in treating intractable types of epilepsy involving cluster-seizures, especially devastating for small children unable to develop normally due to multiple seizures – sometimes hundreds a day – that were only treatable previously by drugs with often severe side-effects.

CBD efforts stymied

Particularly galling for Jones were the results of a CBD bill sponsored by Rep. Mike Carter, R-Ooltewah, last year that authorized a pilot testing program for children with intractable epilepsy. The program was supposed to be run through university hospitals, using a low-THC strain of marijuana that Tennessee Tech was supposed to be involved in breeding, since marijuana and marijuana derivatives could not be transported across state lines due to federal law.

Despite what seemed a hopeful step forward, Jones said the program has yet to get off the ground.

“They didn’t intend for it to do anything,” she said of the study. “Carter only offered up the bill because the Koozer family lived in his district and he was trying to make it seem like he was doing something. But so far, nothing has come from it.”

Jones said though neither Faison’s bill nor the Dickerson/Williams bill will likely address all of her concerns, she’ll vote for both rather than see the legislative session end with nothing accomplished in either area. She worries about the timing of the Dickerson/Williams bill so late in the session.

“You know how hard they try to push us out the door (at the end of the legislative session),” Jones said. “If they wait until Tuesday (March 31), they’re really going to have to ram it through. Of course it helps that, unlike my bill, which was sent to the criminal committee to die, it looks like they sent Rep. Williams’ bill straight to the health committee and bypassed criminal.”

Small growers worried

MMJ activist Bernie Ellis of Santa Fe, Tennessee, author of Koozer-Kuhn, who has been at the forefront of the fight both nationally and in Tennessee for years, welcomed news of the Republican-sponsored bill as a significant step forward.

Like Jones, Ellis worries that TennCanGrow’s involvement in writing this year’s Republican bill doesn’t bode well for the small growers that both have advocated for in the event of MMJ legalization in the state. But on Saturday, Ellis was taking the optimistic view with the prospect of finally seeing something accomplished on behalf of sick people who will benefit most.

“It’s a great start,” Ellis told The Leaf-Chronicle. “Now what these patients must have is access to safe, effective, inexpensive medical cannabis in forms that work best for the patient.

“Most research shows that must include inhalable forms. The best and safest of these is the vapors from dried whole-plant cannabis flowers that is provided by vaporizers. Cannabis oil that can be consumed with vape pens would also be critical. That is where we need to end up, if we are really sincere in wanting to serve those patient populations.”

Ellis is a public health epidemiologist with 30 years of experience who found himself a convicted felon for providing free medical marijuana, grown on his farm, for terminally ill neighbors. He avoided prison time, spending 18 months in a halfway house and losing 25 acres of his farm in the process, confiscated by the federal government.

He has been seeking a presidential pardon since 2011.

“I applaud Senators Dickerson and Green for moving our deliberations to a higher level – a science-based level,” Ellis said. “If we stay on this course, a comprehensive, broad-based and effective medical cannabis program can go forward here. We can’t just throw something together, but Senators Dickerson and Green have given us marching orders to move in that direction. Finally.

“For that, they deserve our thanks.”

Philip Grey, 245-0719

Military affairs reporter

philipgrey@theleafchronicle.com

Twitter: @PhilipGrey_Leaf