This is a flashback to our 2009 Legislative Session, when the medical marijuana bill was introduced as “HB 164.” A similar medical marijuana bill will be introduced in the Texas Legislature in 2011, and we need all the support we can muster to get it to the Governor’s desk.
From mpp.org archives, the website for the Marijuana Policy Project, regarding HB 164, the medical marijuana bill introduced in the previous Texas Legislature.
In 2009, a bill was introduced in the Texas Legislature that would allow seriously ill patients to raise a medical defense to charges of possessing marijuana for medical use. It would also protect doctors who make medical marijuana recommendations.
Please contact your state legislators today and ask them to give medical marijuana their utmost consideration. This is a modest and compassionate proposal to make sure the seriously ill do not languish in prison for treating their suffering.
HB 164
The proposed legislative measure would allow physicians to make written or oral recommendations that, in the physician’s medical opinion, the potential benefits of marijuana would likely outweigh the health risks for a particular patient. If arrested for possession of marijuana, a patient with a recommendation from his or her physician would be able to assert an affirmative defense to charges arising from his or her medical use of marijuana. If a court accepts the affirmative defense, it would mean that a patient could avoid jail time and fines. The bill would not, however, protect patients from the initial arrest.
One of the main reasons that medical marijuana is finally an issue being discussed in the Texas Legislature is because no fewer than 14 states have enacted medical marijuana laws, the most recent being Arizona.
Please pass this alert on to others in Texas who might be interested in making sure medical marijuana receives the attention it deserves this year.
Onward and upward,
Topher Belsher
Director of Online Community Outreach
Texas NORML
Topher@TexasNORML.org
