With a doctor’s recommendation, terminally ill patients and hospice patients in North Carolina will soon be able to legally consume cannabis.
After passing another committee on Thursday, a bill that would legalize medicinal cannabis usage under strict limitations will be brought to the floor of the Senate the following week.
A favorable vote was cast in the Senate Rules Committee, after earlier this week’s favorable votes in the Judiciary and Finance Committees. Senator Bill Rabon (R-Brunswick County), a longtime advocate for medicinal marijuana, is the rules committee’s chair.
The law is nearly identical to one that easily cleared the Senate in 2017 and would legalize the medicinal use of cannabis for patients suffering from any of more than a dozen chronic illnesses, as well as those in hospice care or with terminal illnesses.
A new commission may award ten licenses to businesses interested in cultivating, processing, and selling cannabis through a variety of retail locations. 10% of monthly profits are paid to the state.
Conservatives in society continue to voice their opposition to the law because medicinal cannabis is not useful. It’s common for advocates of the bill to emphasize the bill’s beneficial effects on alleviating symptoms.
Since the North Carolina House did not take up the Senate’s medicinal marijuana bill last year, its fate this year is uncertain.