SC Senate braces for long days before vote on medical marijuana bill
The South Carolina Senate’s Republican leader warned his colleagues of late days on Tuesday and Wednesday as the Legislature’s upper chamber prepares to wrap up debate and vote on whether to legalize certain forms of marijuana for medical use.
Senators have debated the legislation proposed by Sen. Tom Davis for roughly two weeks without a vote, but Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey strongly indicated he’d like the chamber to be done with the bill by this coming week’s end, leaving senators to move on to other issues.
“Tuesday will almost certainly be a late day, Wednesday will likely be a late day too,” Massey, R-Edgefield, said. “Just everybody be prepared for that. As the senator from Florence (Hugh Leatherman) used to say, ‘Might want to bring an extra shirt.’”
The upcoming vote on S. 150 will be about seven years in the making for Davis, R-Beaufort, who has over the years narrowed the proposal to make it conservative enough to appease on-the-fence colleagues and law enforcement, loudly critical of its passage.
Last month, the South Carolina Republican Party blasted out an email to Republicans from the head of the state’s Sheriff’s Association, who characterized the proposal as dangerous — a descriptor South Carolinians who use medical cannabis for health-related reasons object to.
A Republican firm last year found 72% of likely general election voters support a doctor being allowed to prescribe medical marijuana to people who suffer from serious medical problems.
Davis’ proposal would not allow people with approved medical issues, such as cancer and glaucoma, to smoke marijuana should the bill become law. Instead, the legislation approves the use of medical marijuana through oils, salves, vaporizers or patches. And doctors would have to approve the patient in person and check off a list of measures that includes whether that patient has a history of substance abuse.
Senators have filed 28 — possibly more — proposed changes to whittle the legislation even further.
Davis told The State Thursday, however, he’s still confident he has the votes to secure passage. He added there’s been no indication senators are proposing amendments simply to delay a vote.
“Yes. Absolutely, yes,” Davis said when asked whether there were enough votes for passage. “Senators are supposed to engage like that and I think the process is working the way that it should.”
South Carolina could become the 38th state to legalize marijuana for medical uses after Mississippi’s governor signed a similar measure into law just this past week.
Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who is running for another four-year term this year, hasn’t endorsed Davis’ bill but has acknowledged that people with serious medical problems use it to alleviate pain.
2 debates to happen at the State House this week
South Carolina lawmakers, particularly in the House, have spent most of the 2022 legislative session so far debating legislation at the committee level as the General Assembly makes its way through the calendar that ends in early May.
Any legislation that fails to pass both chambers before the last year in the two-year session will effectively die for the year, leaving lawmakers to refile hundreds of bills next year.
Here are two debates coming up this week in the House worth watching:
House eyes proposal to change state election law
Republican leaders in the state House will try to pass legislation this year — H. 4919, sponsored by House Speaker Jay Lucas, R-Darlington — that would add two weeks of early voting in South Carolina, require identification when voting by mail and eliminate certain excuses to vote absentee.
State lawmakers left town in 2021 deciding to punt any significant debate over election law changes, but a House Judiciary Committee panel will revisit the issue and weigh those changes Wednesday afternoon.
The legislation, backed by a considerable number of House Republicans who hold the majority in the chamber, was motivated by the 2020 presidential election, when the state expanded absentee voting to all because of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent election challenges in other states, like Georgia and Arizona.
The House proposal is one of more than a dozen election-related bills filed by lawmakers, but is the likeliest to become law since it’s backed by a powerful House Republican.
Powerful Republicans wade into school voucher movement
With a majority in the Legislature and a national, yet controversial debate over school curriculum, state lawmakers are considering a slew of bills that would empower parents’ say over what happens in their child’s school and classroom.
Among those proposals is one sponsored by state Rep. Murrell Smith, the powerful House budget chairman whose committee writes the state budget every year.
His bill — H. 4879, dubbed the “Parental Choice in Education” — is a joint resolution that would spend $75 million from the state’s reserve account on a school voucher plan and let parents use the money for their child to pursue private or other public education.
A House Ways and Means panel will consider the bill at 11 a.m. Tuesday.
The legislation is similar to a debate happening across the State House in the Senate, where senators have for weeks debated a measure that would take money for K-12 public schools and transfer it to education scholarship accounts that parents of low-income and special needs students could use to pay for private educational costs.
The bill is intended to give opportunities to children whose needs are not being met by public schools, and whose parents cannot afford private education.
This story was originally published February 6, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "SC Senate braces for long days before vote on medical marijuana bill."
