Louisiana Legislature Approves Bill Allowing Smokable Medical Cannabis

A bill to allow smokable forms of medical cannabis has cleared both chambers of Louisiana’s Legislature, moving to the desk of Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards who is expected to sign it into law, KEEL reports. State Rep. Tanner Magee (R), the bill’s sponsor, said the measure will lower the cost of medical cannabis for the state’s patients.

“This will allow [producers] to deliver a much cheaper product to the pharmacies and retail level and then it is about the pharmacies pricing it right. It should drop the cost tremendously.” – Magee to KEEL

The new products should be available in Louisiana dispensaries in January.

Under current law, the only forms of medical cannabis available in the state are liquids, topicals, inhalers, and edible gummies.

Another bill covering taxation of the newly allowed smokable products is still working its way through the Legislature. That proposal was recently amended to include an unrelated tax scheme for infrastructure funding that could prove controversial, the report says.

Last year, lawmakers expanded the program by allowing any medical condition to be treated with medical cannabis as long as the condition is approved by a physician. That bill outlined nine specific conditions that would allow patients to enroll in the state’s medical cannabis program but also included language allowing “any condition not otherwise specified in present law or proposed law that a physician, in his medical opinion, considers debilitating to an individual patient and is qualified through his medical education and training to treat.”