Senate panel passes marijuana bills; higher ed funding bill filed

Two bills related to medicinal marijuana passed the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee Wednesday (Jan. 18), a day after both passed the full House of Representatives.

Also, bills were introduced to change the state’s higher education formula, provide public schools funding if they educate private school and home school students, and repeal the state’s prohibition against selling alcohol on Christmas Day.

House Bill 1026 by Rep. Doug House, R-North Little Rock, would extend rulemaking deadlines to 180 days from the current 120 days after the November election, when the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment was passed. House told the senators that the 120 days allowed by the amendment is unworkable under the state’s Administrative Procedure Act, which requires time for public comment.

The bill applies to the Department of Health, the Alcoholic Beverage Control Division, and the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission, which was created by the amendment to regulate the licensure of cultivation and dispensary facilities.

House Bill 1058 by House, which the panel also endorsed, strikes a phrase in the amendment requiring physicians to provide written certification that marijuana’s potential health benefits would outweigh the risks for a patient. Instead, doctors would be required to certify in writing that the patient has a qualifying medical condition. The Department of Health will issue identification cards allowing patients to purchase the drug. House told the senators that medical marijuana is illegal nationally and cannot be prescribed by a physician. Requiring doctors to certify that rewards outweigh risks would subject them to liability concerns and discourage many from prescribing the drug.

The bill requires a two-thirds vote in each house because it modifies a constitutional amendment. On Tuesday, it narrowly passed the House, 70-23-1.

The bill also would clarify that an application for a registry identification card is not a medical record, but it is still exempt from the state’s Freedom of Information Act. Dispensary records also would be confidential and exempt from the act. Making the information part of a medical record would put various people dealing with the information at risk of violating federal HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) privacy laws, including police officers and state agency employees, House said.

In other legislative business, Rep. Mark Lowery, R-Maumelle, introduced House Bill 1209 to adopt a “productivity-based funding model” for the state’s higher education institutions. A priority of Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s, the new model would be based on a college’s success in advancing students towards degrees and certificates rather than simple numerical enrollment. The Department of Higher Education is developing the model.

Hutchinson earlier announced that the new model would be paired with a $10 million increase in state funding for higher education, the first increase in funding in many years.

Lowery also introduced House Bill 1208, which would allow, but not require, school districts to enroll private and home school students to enroll in one or more academic courses. For each course, the district would receive one-sixth of the foundation funding that the state provides to schools each year. In fiscal year 2017, per pupil foundation funding was $6,714. Under the adequacy report prepared by legislators in late 2016, foundation funding for fiscal year 2018 will be $6,781 per pupil if it is approved by the Legislature and signed by the governor. One sixth of that amount is $1,130.17.

Also, Rep. Mary Bentley, R-Perryville, said in an interview Wednesday she is amending House Bill 1035, the Arkansas Healthy Food Improvement Act. It would require the Department of Human Services to allow Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries to use their benefits only for “foods, food products, and beverages that have sufficient nutritional value.” The SNAP program previously was known as the food stamp program. Bentley said the amendment would involve the Department of Health in creating the standards.

The bill is opposed by Wal-Mart Stores, and in committee testimony Tuesday, Paul Rowton, executive vice president of Edwards Food Giant, a chain of 13 grocery stores, said the bill would be difficult to implement on a practical level because the consumer food industry contains about 300,000 individually labeled food items. Bentley said Wednesday the bill’s intent is to exclude only junk foods, “not determine what foods are healthy and go through the whole gamut. It’s going to be a very narrow list, and that’s what we’re after.”

Also on Wednesday, Rep. Karilyn Brown, R-Sherwood, introduced House Bill 1216, which would repeal the state’s prohibition against selling alcoholic beverages on Christmas Day.