FILE — Customers look at the menu of products available outside Doctor's Orders RX medical marijuana dispensary in Hot Springs on May 11 as they wait in line for the business to open.

ROGERS -- Conservative lawmakers will do everything they can to ensure medical marijuana is used strictly for medical purposes, but they'll need constituent support, five Northwest Arkansas legislators told the Benton County Republican Women on Tuesday.

The Republican group invited the five Benton County delegation members who are women to share on a panel at its Tuesday lunch meeting. All five lawmakers had opposed the 2016 legalization amendment. Yet the amendment won voter approval, and it is the responsibility of lawmakers to see it is complied with -- strictly, the lawmakers said.

Lawmakers on the panel were: Sen. Cecile Bledsoe, R-Rogers; Rep. Rebecca Petty, R-Rogers; Rep. Jana Della Rosa, R-Rogers; Rep. Gayla McKenzie, R-Gravette; and Rep. Robin Lundstrum, R-Elm Springs.

"The people of Arkansas are kind and loving, and when this amendment was presented to them as a way to help people with cancer and children having seizures, they voted to help," Bledsoe said of the medical marijuana amendment after the meeting. "That is what they voted to approve, not recreational use."

Restricting uses of the drug to strictly medical purposes is proving both difficult and contentious, several of the lawmakers said. They told the group the issue will come up again in the next regular legislative session in 2021.

Medical marijuana isn't prescribed by doctors, Bledsoe said, because it's still classified as an illegal drug by federal law. Doctors can approve a state-issued card saying the patient has a treatable condition under the Arkansas amendment, allowing the patient to obtain medical marijuana at a licensed outlet by showing the card. That has fewer safeguards than prescriptions, Bledsoe said.

Lundstrum and Bledsoe sponsored Senate Bill 440, now Act 989 of 2019, that prohibits the active ingredient of medical marijuana from being used in foods, candies or other forms that might appeal to children. "If it is medical marijuana, it needs to look like medical marijuana," Lundstrum said.

On other issues, the lawmakers asked group members to volunteer or suggest names for state boards and commissions. Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Benton County native, needs more people who are willing to serve, said Lundstrum.

NW News on 05/22/2019