Legislative Update
Last week the S.54 Conference Committee appeared to abandon due process to finalize the bill in private without a final public meeting. After that dubious procedure concluded the Conference Committee, the House was quick to pass the bill onto the Senate, where they passed the bill onto the Governor. Phil Scott has 5 days to veto the bill, sign it, or allow it to pass into law without his signature.
“Late Wednesday evening, September 16th, rumors started spreading that conferees reached a deal privately and without a 4th public meeting and that the Conference Committee was ready to send their report and final bill to the legislature.”
By the beginning of last week, Monday, September 14th, everyone in the Vermont cannabis body politic started wondering out-loud when the 4th, and presumed to be final, S.54 Conference Committee meeting would be held – the committee calendar had not been updated since their last meeting on Friday, September 4th. This lack of scheduling was suspicious because the end of the legislative session, Friday September 25th, was quickly approaching and we knew the Marijuana Policy Project and their lobbyists were eager to pass S.54 into law. Late Wednesday evening, September 16th, rumors started spreading that conferees reached a deal privately and without a 4th public meeting, and that the Conference Committee was ready to send their report and final bill to the legislature. Using procedural trickery to rush a bill through without proper public due process is dubious, at best, disrespectful to constituents, and indicative of the entire process for S.54.
After the Conference Committee debacle, their report and final bill were sent to the House floor the very next day, Thursday, September 17th. The normal legislative procedure of moving a bill from committee to chamber commonly takes a few days, but with S.54 it was immediate, the process was rushed. During the floor vote many House members expressed disappointment and reluctance to support the final bill because of the saliva test provision, but ultimately the chamber adopted the Conference Committee report and passed the final bill with a vote of 92 in favor and 56 oppose, that’s 2 additional oppose votes since the House last voted on bill S.54 back in February – 54 votes in opposition were counted then.
The Senate slowed the process down a bit by allowing the weekend to pass before picking-up the bill on Tuesday, September 22nd. Their Tuesday morning floor vote quickly adopted the Conference Committee report and passed the final bill with a vote of 23 in favor and 6 oppose, but not without Senator McCormack passionately explaining his vote (see video). Just like the House floor vote, in the previous week, Senators exhibited less desire to support the bill than when it was last in their chambers.
Now that bill S.54 has left the legislature, clearing both the House and Senate, along with the Conference Committee, it’s enqueue for Governor Phil Scott who will either: veto the bill, sign it into law, or allow to pass without his signature. Despite recent headlines, nobody is sure what Governor Scott will do with bill S.54.
So, what’s in the final bill? The final version of bill S.54 that came out of Conference Committee is objectively worse for Vermonters than any earlier versions of the bill. The compromises the House and Senate conferees made in arriving at a final bill includes several arbitrary provisions that are political in nature and provide little-to-no meaningful solutions for Vermonters. Some final changes to bill S.54 include:
All advertising is prohibited;
Opt-in local control, which will create a confusing patchwork of different cannabis policy from town to town and make it harder for small businesses to participate;
A first-in-the-nation roadside saliva test, which requires a warrant to execute, but Vermont is an implied consent state so the warrant requirement is unclear;
A first-in-the-nation cap on THC for flower and concentrates, which actually places product safety at-risk and effectively eliminates hash products;
The Cannabis Control Board will be 12 politically-appointed members and reside within the executive branch, this apparatus is designed to be a revolving door for industry cronyism and they have complete discretion over rule making.
If passed into law, what changes will S.54 bring to the state’s medical marijuana program? As a compromise in Conference Committee, the House agreed to the Senate’s language to fold the Vermont Marijuana Registry and move it into the Cannabis Control Board. The CCB is a structurally flawed regulatory body staffed with lawyers and with no experience with cannabis. This move effectively consolidates corporate control over the medical and recreational cannabis markets in Vermont, pushing medical patients and caregivers into the recreational marketplace as consumers, where corporations stand to earn maximum profit. This move also makes it more difficult for patients and caregivers to grow their own medicine, another long-time thorn in the side of corporate cannabis. Some new changes S.54 will introduce to Vermont’s medical marijuana program:
Caregivers must now get fingerprinted and pass a criminal background check. In a time when our nation is calling for less policing, including more law enforcement in the application process for medical cannabis is reprehensible;
The Cannabis Control Board is now also tasked with drafting entirely new rules for the state medical program;
No new dispensary licenses will be issued.
As a resource, below are the complete videos from the House and the Senate floor vote on bill S.54.