It wasn’t quite a 180-degree turn, but state House Speaker Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) has bucked some in her caucus by announcing she supports legislation that would legalize and regulate medical marijuana in Tennessee.
Though she was never radically opposed to the idea, it took a familial experience for Harwell to lend her support to legislation pushed this year and in years past by Republicans Sen. Steve Dickerson and Rep. Jeremy Faison. The medical marijuana effort in our state once seemed quixotic, but now it has the backing of the most powerful figure in the House.
Harwell’s sister, who lives in Colorado, was practicing yoga last year when she fractured her back.
“She was in a lot of pain,” Harwell tells the Scene. “She was in a cast from her hip up to her neck and was given opioids. She realized that she didn’t want to take them long term. She was going to be in this cast for 12 weeks and didn’t want to be on them.”
Instead she tried an alternative: medical marijuana.
“She didn’t smoke anything,” Harwell says. She instead used a “crystal gel that she mixed with coconut oil.”
Speaker Harwell had never taken much of a stand on medical marijuana. In 2014 she told the Scene she didn’t “think that this state is ready for that movement yet,” but said she would study what happened in Colorado.
Now she allows that “in very limited cases, there is a use for medical marijuana.”
Harwell and Senate Speaker Randy McNally appointed a special joint committee to study medical marijuana last year, and the current Faison/Dickerson bill is an outgrowth of that process. Harwell admits the bill faces “a long process, but I am more optimistic.”
Some in her caucus are warming to the idea, she contends, in part because of the increased study. But other Republicans remain vigilant in opposition to medical marijuana, including fellow state House members and U.S. Rep. Diane Black, one of Harwell’s opponents in the Republican gubernatorial primary.
“I am totally opposed to this idea of what they are calling medical marijuana, because there is nothing that has come out of the [National Institutes of Health] to show that there is consistency and that we can be comfortable in whatever the marijuana is that is on the streets these days,” Black told a television station late last year. “And frankly, if it made it to my desk today I would veto it.”
Black’s husband has also employed lobbyists to oppose the Faison/Dickerson legislation.
Her opposition echoes that of some in the state legislature who question why medical marijuana should skip U.S. Food and Drug Administration scrutiny while other prescription drugs take years to come to market. But Harwell says some FDA-approved drugs, including prescription opioids, have wreaked havoc on Tennessee communities.
“We have a lot of drugs that are currently on the market that have gone through the FDA process that really are leading to addiction and severe problems in our society,” Harwell says.
She’s quick to insist that her support for medical marijuana “does not include smoking a joint: It is crystals and potion and lotions.”
Faison, Dickerson and Harwell will have to combat more than just some stubborn fellow Republicans. Tennessee Department of Health officials outlined their own concerns with moving faster than the FDA during one of the joint committee meetings last fall.
“We really think that the FDA approval process and pharmaceutical-grade manufacturing assures that medications that Tennesseans or anybody else has access to are safe and effective,” said Deputy Commissioner Michael Warren.
And so Dickerson and Faison have offered a limited proposal, which would permit marijuana prescriptions only for certain serious health conditions and would create a commission to govern use of the drug. On Monday, Harwell announced that she’d co-sponsor the bill, and as of press time, the House Criminal Justice committee was scheduled to hold a hearing on Faison and Dickerson’s bill Tuesday.
While a Vanderbilt poll last year found nearly 80 percent support for medical marijuana in Tennessee — that’s 34 percent in favor of both recreational and medical, with an additional 44 percent in favor of medical only — the Republicans pushing for it still face an uphill battle. And yet, with the support of Harwell and others, the playing field is much closer to level than it was when Democrats fruitlessly pushed similar legislation for years before.
“You have to wonder,” Harwell told a television station last month. “Maybe this is a gift from God. Maybe this natural plant is better than synthetic drugs we are prescribing to people.”
