Hello there, and welcome (or welcome back) to the site for another update! I’d like to take the beginning of this update to thank all of our subscribers and followers – you guys are really starting to grow in numbers, and we really appreciate all the support and feedback you’ve given us across the board on various social media. It’s really amazing to know that we’re making a positive impact for so many of you. We will be here to help guide you through the waters of this industry as it continues to gain momentum and growth through 2019.
We’ve had another eventful week as we near the end of February. Both the Florida Senate and House have their respective bills to set guidelines for smokable cannabis in Florida; the two versions are getting closer together and will hopefully be able to set up a good foundation for patients who have been eagerly awaiting smokable medical marijuana.
As is almost always the case, some new products became available this week as well, so we will touch on those a bit in this update too!
Smokable Cannabis soon to be reality in Florida
Perhaps the biggest news story of this week is that the Senate and House both passed bills to set the framework for smokable medical cannabis in Florida. We’ll save all the legal jargon and provide you with the highlights of each bill.
Senate Bill 182
- Allows for whole cannabis flower sales
- Smokable marijuana available in many forms, but each MMTC must make pre-rolled joints one of those forms
- Patients under 18 must have two doctors sign off to allow them to smoke medical cannabis
- Patients can acquire smoking devices such as bongs, pipes, and rolling papers from vendors other than dispensaries. This does not apply to devices used for vaporizing medical marijuana – they must be bought from the dispensary only.
- Between the house and senate bills, this is the one we want to pass
House Bill 7015
- Only allows smokable medical cannabis to be sold in pre-rolled joints. No pipes, rolling papers, bongs, or any other smoking devices to be sold in dispensaries.
- Patients under 18 cannot use smokable marijuana under any circumstances.
Obviously, the senate bill is much closer to what most of us envisioned for our medical marijuana program in Florida. As we near the March 15 deadline, we should see the two legislative branches come closer to a compromise – hopefully much closer to the Senate’s version of the bill.
TruCRMBL Reception and new Trulieve Products
The big story in our last update was the launch of Trulieve’s newest cannabis concentrate – cannabis crumble, or TruCRMBL. You can read all about that update here. Note of interest – we correctly predicted nearly all of the actual strains that were released! We just missed Strawberry Switchblade and the new Lemon OG strain.
From what we’ve seen on Reddit and Instagram, TruCRMBL has hailed widespread positive reviews. Patients raved about the excellent smell/taste – very close to the flower form of most every strain – and the effects, which most everyone agreed are closer to true cannabis flower than any other concentrate. You can check out our review of TruCRMBL here – it was thoroughly enjoyed, and we will definitely be back to try the other strains soon.
New Product: Orange Cookies 5:3 CBD:THC Vape Cart
Trulieve released yet another new product this week – a new ratio vape cart with a 5:3 CBD:THC ratio. This product may be a good choice for patients who want more CBD than a 1:1, but still want to feel the effects of THC. The vape cart is currently available in a 600mg ceramic tip for $74; the strain is Orange Cookies. You can order the vape cart here.
Trulieve also released a few new flower strains: Poison Fruit, Bubble Gum, and Lemon OG. You can find those on Trulieve’s flower page here.
Patients be wary – we’ve heard a couple of disappointing reviews on Bubble Gum, with many saying the flower is over-dried and stripped of any noticeable smell/taste. However, we haven’t heard those complaints about Lemon OG or Poison Fruit – and some people like for their cannabis to be extremely dry (though we aren’t one of them!); just keep this in mind as you place your next orders, as we know it already hurts enough to endure the premium prices we have to pay.
We will have several new product reviews on the way in the coming weeks as always, so be sure to look for those as we move into the month of March!
Closing Thoughts
The fact that we are getting closer to smokable cannabis in Florida is exciting, though we really hope the current House bill is not the one that’s implemented. However, we feel confident that the final law that is eventually passed will allow for full flower sales – there’s simply too much push for it, especially with Nikki Fried as our Agriculture Commissioner and the newly appointed Director of Cannabis for Florida.
We’ve been saying it over and over again – this is a good year for Florida Cannabis. With the Florida Medical Cannabis Conference currently underway in Orlando, we expect our next update will be full of new developments for the industry. Be sure to stay tuned to this site and our various social media accounts, and thanks for all of your support. We are (slowly) getting to where we want to be with our medical marijuana program!
Be sure to join our email subscriber list and follow us on Twitter and Instagram to stay up-to-date with all the latest in the Florida medical cannabis industry! You can find a quick-subscribe button in the righthand column on this site. Thank you for taking the time to read; we genuinely hope you find this site beneficial to helping you as a patient.
Florida Medical Cannabis Collective 
It is my understanding that SB 182 can still be amended at this point in time. I would strongly encourage everyone to reach out to the senators in charge of the bill and ask them to allow for vaporizers to be purchased outside of MMTCs. The devices MMTCs are selling for both concentrate and flower vaporization are horrible. Every single one of them is already a rebranded product that can be purchased at a smoke shop for cheaper than what the MMTCs are selling them for and there are so many far superior options available on the market. Patients have the right to choose how they use their medicine, and I simply cannot believe that after so much resistance to smokable flower with vaporization as the preferred alternative, the legislature doesn’t want to allow people to choose their own devices. Vaping is what they wanted this whole time, and if we can smoke flower out of a bong as implied in SB 182 but not choose to vaporize it with a high quality device such as a DaVinci IQ, it just proves that lawmakers care more about their precious red tape than they do about their constituents.
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Thanks for holding this space online for us.
After reading reddit posts close to a year about mmtc’s that seem like they don’t care about operating at a loss, I’ve been putting together a possible picture for myself by checking backgrounds of the real estate used by the mmtc’s. Our FL sunshine laws make this so easy. And maybe the findings can be used in continued arguments against caps and cartels.
For example what’s up with the local Curaleaf?
First I looked up the owner of the property.
https://www.leonpa.org/pt/Datalets/PrintDatalet.aspx?pin=113039%20%20A0030&gsp=PA_OVERVIEW&taxyear=2018&jur=47&ownseq=0&card=1&roll=REAL&State=1&item=1&items=-1&all=all&ranks=Datalet
Then I looked up the LLC.
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/GetDocument?aggregateId=flal-l09000055270-3b0add50-daf4-4d13-bc55-9965847bc9c5&transactionId=l09000055270-dcb44971-fb1e-45c9-9c0a-bb0376ef86c3&formatType=PDF
Then I looked up the registered agent.
I won’t post the link here but the name can be gleaned from my previous links and the owner HAS a law firm web site.
I’ve done this for many FL mmtc properties now and see very strong connections between FL mmj and REAL ESTATE lawyers. I remember too what the Trulieve CEO told Barron’s about using LLCs for political campaign finance contribution limit workarounds.
Meaning for us in all of this? Regulators profit on our backs, no big secret, but let’s see how they do this and make it clear to the state that WE SEE that all these legal complications have nothing to do with FL health care.
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