Senator Fred Mills’ SB 180 passed out of Senate Judiciary Committee C in an amended form this morning and is now headed to the Senate floor.  We’ll be keeping an eye on this good bill and, of course, supporting it every step of the way if it remains true to its current form.  Here’s a link to the text of the bill if you want to review it.  Please call or email to thank Senator Mills and the other members of this committee for protecting therapeutic Cannabis patients and the system, overall, in our state.  Now it’s time to start contacting all senators to lobby them for their support of this good bill.  Finally, be on the look out for a copy of the amended bill though as it was not available at the time of this posting: bhttp://www.legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=981669

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Senator Mills’ attempt to reform the existing therapeutic Cannabis law of Louisiana is in the form of SB 271 (http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=983501) which will be heard tomorrow in Senate Health & Welfare Committee.  We met with him yesterday for about 1.5 hrs. in an effort to reform this bill to more closely mimic the SMPL/MPP bill, HB 1112.  As of this moment, SMPL is taking a “wait and see” approach to this bill, neither opposing, nor supporting this bill.  We’ll be closely watching how it goes tomorrow and if you want to contact members of this committee please simply tell them that you support HB 1112 and ask that they amend SB 271 to make it a stronger and more functional instrument in delivering medicine into the hands of patients who need it.

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Finally, this is our bill, HB 1112 (http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=991577).  First and foremost, we need all of you to take 5 – 10 minutes to contact Representative James’ office by phone (225.343.3633) or email (james.ted@legis.la.gov) to thank him for sponsoring the most important and comprehensive therapeutic Cannabis legislation Louisiana has ever seen.  Next, we need to contact the committee members on House Health & Welfare (http://house.louisiana.gov/H_Cmtes/HealthAndWelfare.aspx) to let them know that we strongly support this bill that is most likely going to be considered on Wednesday morning, April 20, 2016 at 10:00am.  Then, if we are serious about winning, we need to spread the word far and wide every way that we know how and even consider dressing up and then showing up at the State Capitol on Wednesday.  Please also consider making a financial contribution to this cause.  It takes resources to do what we do and even more to be successful at it.  Finally, please email me to let me know you did it: contact@smplouisiana.org