House Committee discuss Senate’s medical marijuana, fentanyl bill | State News

Some legislators, including Rep. Phil Christofanelli, R-Saint Peters, think the language regarding the “appeal” to minors needs to be tailored more narrowly. Brownies, cookies and soda, Christofanelli said, could be viewed as being designed to appeal to children.

“Virtually any marijuana edible is banned under this legislation,” Christofanelli said. The plain reading of the bill, he said, is a ban on edibles altogether, and, unless modified, he would be “wholeheartedly opposed” to the amendment.

Discussion during the hearing centered on the need for patients who cannot swallow pills to have other way to take the medication.

Lawmakers also debated a section that would enhance penalties for the possession of a controlled substance for home health care providers. Currently, unlawful possession of a controlled substance, according to Sater, is a Class D felony. This bill would make the offense a Class C felony for such people.

Representatives including Rep. Gina Mitten, D-St. Louis, and Christofanelli expressed reservations about this section of the bill. Christofanelli said he worries this “piecemeal” selection of professions could place extra strain on filling home health care positions that are already underpaid and hard to recruit, while excluding other professions that also have similar access to drugs.

“Usually, it’s in-home health workers that have the greatest ability to have access,” Sater responded. “There’s no control situation inside the home. You may have a patient and an in-home hospice worker as the only two people there, so it would be very easy for a health care worker to steal some of those medications.”

The same bill also seeks to enhance penalties to include second-degree murder for the trafficking, delivery or manufacture of a Schedule I or II substance that results in a death, and it adds fentanyl to trafficking statutes to be a Class A felony.

Until now, Sater said, fentanyl was not included in trafficking statutes largely because it was primarily being used to cut heroin.“Now,” Sater said, “it’s being trafficked on its own.”

“We are having people die from fentanyl and carfentanil…every day,” Sater said. “I think the people that distribute these types of drugs that are killing people — killing your neighbors — should be held accountable.”