After long work sessions, a rewrite of the citizen-initiated medical marijuana bill was approved yesterday by the Legislature's Health and Human Services Committee. The committee agreed to allow a maximum of eight non-profit medical marijuana dispensaries around the state, according to the Kennebec Journal.
The panel also agreed to require both patients and caregivers to register with the state's Department of Health and Human Services and get a state-issued identity card authorizing them to use the drug. Rep. Anne Perry, a Calais Democrat who co-chairs the committee, says it was hard to craft a measure that met committee concerns, and stayed faithful to the original law.
"It has to be self-sustaining, so we didn't want to tie the department down to just one way to do this," she told Capitol News Service. "Because if we did that, we may not even have the dispensary system able to go. So we needed to give them enough room to be able to determine what would be the best way to make it self-sustaining."
But Rep. Sarah Lewin, an Eliot Republican, said the legislation will lead to abuse and an increase in criminal activity. She said voters will rue the day they passed the medical marijuana law setting up dispensaries without providing what she believes is adequate law enforcement oversight.