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If Utah were to allow "willing physicians and willing patients" to consider cannabis treatments, it would be a "highly regulated freedom," the senator sponsoring the medical marijuana bill told his colleagues Monday.
Time ran out before a vote on the Senate floor, so Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Saratoga Springs, moved to table SB259. It likely will be back before the Senate on Tuesday.
Medical marijuana would be available only to those suffering from diseases listed in his bill, such as cancer, epilepsy and Crohn's disease, and it would be processed into tinctures, oils or edibles like candies, Madsen said.
Patients would get prescriptions from specialists who treat diseases or illnesses on the list, and would take a prescription-and-payment card to a dispensary.
The dispensaries would look more like pharmacies than head shops, Madsen said. "No tie-dyed T-shirts. No bongs."
He noted the results of a poll over the weekend, sponsored by backers of medical cannabis, the Libertas Institute and the Drug Policy Project of Utah. It found 72 percent of Utah voters favor legalization. The poll of 400 people, conducted by Y2 Analytics, has a margin of error of nearly 5 percent.
The only senator to question Madsen on the floor was Sen. Evan Vickers, R-Cedar City, a pharmacist.
He questioned whether patients could game the system, pretending to have chronic pain to get pot, and whether doctors could own cannabis dispensaries. He also was dubious about the ability of the state to keep tight control on inventory and wondered about zoning for the grow operations and production plants.
Madsen said a substitute bill will clear up some of those issues.
Citing statistics he said came from drug prevention specialists in southern Utah, Vickers said that other states with legal medical marijuana have learned that the average buyer is a 32-year-old white male with a history of substance abuse and no life-threatening illnesses.
"That's what's going on in other states. I think it's a cause for concern," Vickers said.
Several patients or parents of patients with life-threatening illnesses who advocate for medical marijuana watched from the Senate gallery Monday, but an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration who told of seeing rabbits high from pot grown illegally in the forests of Utah did not appear to be present.
Madsen acknowledged that the medical and law enforcement communities are split over whether medical marijuana should be legal.
Twitter: @KristenMoulton