For many Floridians, the end of October is about claiming their red or blue affiliations, but for me the color of the season is pink. For me the pink ribbon, the universal symbol for Breast Cancer Awareness, is about more than a walk or fundraiser. When I see pink I think of my mother, who for the second time is fighting stage four metastasized breast cancer.

But with all of the coverage of this year’s gubernatorial race (including #fangate), an important constitutional amendment that could help patients like my mother is getting little attention, and it needs your support.

Amendment 2 would legalize the prescribing of marijuana for medical purposes, such as the incurable cancer my mother is fighting.

My family has been approached by hospice care workers three times over the last fifteen months who have presented countless treatments, and an unbelievable amount of medications to “make her comfortable” and “preserve her quality of life.” The medications alone are taking a toll. She lost over a hundred pounds in a matter of months, stopped eating, underwent more than twenty blood transfusions, and suffers from kidney and liver failure.

Medical care is a decision between patients and their doctors – the government and politicians need to stand aside. So far 21 states and the District of Columbia have stood up for patient’s rights and legalized medicinal marijuana, and Florida needs to be the 22^nd state.

Thankfully, my mother lives in one of those 21 states, Michigan. When it seemed like the medications were killing her faster than the cancer, my family had the option of talking with my mother’s medical team to explore medicinal marijuana. She was able to receive a prescription for medicinal marijuana from her doctor as an alternative to others that made her feel worse.

Keyontay (left) with her mother

The prescription will not cure my mother’s cancer, but I believe it has given her more time to enjoy our family and a better quality of life. She’s no longer confined to a bed and bathroom. She doesn’t suffer from nightmares, mood swings, anxiety, paranoia, nausea, vomiting, depilating constipation, migraines, body swelling, and the countless other side effects of the numerous pills that she would take daily.

I am thankful that my mother and her doctor had the opportunity to explore all of her options for care and treatment.

Right now medical marijuana is generally illegal in Florida. Although this year, the legislature made a very narrow exception for a single strain of marijuana called “Charlotte’s Web,” Amendment 2 is broader, empowering doctors to decide whether and what type of marijuana to prescribe depending on what “debilitating medical condition” their patients have. Other strains that Floridians could legalize with Amendment 2 are used to treat the symptoms of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, Parkinson’s, Crohn’s disease and multiple sclerosis, and there is no good public policy reason for politicians to play doctor and deny care to patients with these diseases.

Contrary to what opponents will tell you, Amendment 2 will not create a pot free-for-all. The amendment requires a sick individual to obtain an identification card from the Florida Department of Health, secure a prescription from a physician, and then purchase it from a state-registered Medical Marijuana Treatment Center.  This will all be regulated by Florida’s Department of Health under rules set out within six months of passage.

Voting “yes” on Amendment 2 is a vote for informed care, choice, and celebrating life at its most vulnerable time.

So when you go into the voting booth and cast your vote, make sure to vote “yes” on Amendment 2. The medical benefits of marijuana are widely recognized and it’s time that patients and doctors decide whether it is an appropriate treatment- not the politicians in Tallahassee.

You’ve got to admire the Florida Legislature for its creativity in inventing ways to circumvent democracy and minimize the power of the people’s vote.

Voters should not be fooled by the Legislature’s latest con – proposed constitutional Amendment #3.  It is a pernicious proposal “requiring” that a lame-duck Governor, rather than the newly-elected Governor, fill judicial vacancies.

It should be soundly defeated.

The Florida Legislature is so afraid of the threat to its power by the voice of the people that it has tried to make it more difficult to register to vote; less convenient to vote by cutting early voting days and hours; and less likely that your vote will be counted by requiring that your entire ballot be tossed if it is submitted in the wrong precinct.  They have diminished the power of your vote by gerrymandering legislative and congressional districts, and they have maintained a Jim Crow system of disfranchisement that takes the right to vote away from more people than any other state.

And now they serve up proposed Amendment #3 to rob your vote of having a critical effect.

Their proposal would create an anti-democratic system in which a new Governor, just elected by a vote of the people, would be stripped of the power to appoint appellate and Supreme Court judges whose term expires on the day the new Governor is sworn in to office.

Appointing judges is among the most important powers of a Governor.  But our Legislature wants to strip the power to appoint judges to the District Courts of Appeal and the Florida Supreme Court from a newly-elected Governor.  Amendment #3 would transfer the power to appoint replacements for those judges who are not eligible for merit retention to the Governor who was is term limited or who was just rejected for re-election by the people.  And there’s no way to hold a Governor with one foot out the door accountable to the people for any decisions, including the quality of appointed judges!

The politicians in Tallahassee are calculating the short-term partisan advantage in this (and most everything else!), but a constitutional amendment is forever.

People vote for a Governor for all sorts of reasons, including the candidate’s judicial philosophy and the kinds of judges the candidate may appoint to the state’s highest courts. But if Amendment #3 passes, not only will the power of a newly elected Governor that will be diminished, the legislature will also succeed in taking the power to decide who will select Florida’s next judges from voters -- for decades to come.

Floridians must reject the legislature’s proposal to strip the power to appoint judges from the newly-elected Governor and give that power to an unaccountable lame-duck Governor.

 

This post appeared as an op-ed in multiple Florida newspapers.