Medical Marijuana Tax Protest Rally

A large crowd, initially about 100 but growing to about 150 despite wind-whipped bitter cold and light snow that began falling an hour into the event, assembled on the Smith Street side of the Rhode Island State House for a scheduled rally at 4pm on Tuesday, February 23, to protest Governor Gina Raimondo’s proposed changes to the state’s medical marijuana and cannabis laws that would, among other things, require independent growers to purchase tax tags costing hundreds of dollars for each plant under cultivation. (See “Medical Marijuana in the State Budget,” by Michael Bilow, Feb. 10, and “News Analysis: Taxing Medical Marijuana,” by Michael Bilow, Feb. 17.)

The rally was organized jointly by the Rhode Island Patients Advocacy Coalition (RIPAC) and the Responsible Caregivers of Rhode Island (RCRI401), groups advocating on behalf of patients and caregivers, respectively, active under the current legal regime for medical marijuana. Joanne Leppanen, executive director of RIPAC, introduced a series of speakers who sounded similar themes.

There was unanimous agreement by patients and caregivers that the governor’s proposal would make individual growing infeasible, effectively reducing by 75% the number of plants under cultivation per patient and requiring up-front payments for per-plant tax tags costing $150 each from patients who grow for themselves or $350 from caregivers who grow for particular patients. Another major objection that emerged was the proposed prohibition against “gifting,” currently allowed between authorized patients and caregivers as long as no money changes hands. No one thought the governor’s projection of $8.4 million in revenue from the tax tag program was credible.

Krista Brack, a patient who said she has Ehlers–Danlos syndrome, an incurable condition that causes debilitating chronic pain, and is about to undergo her 14^th surgery, read from a prepared statement. She said that she is barely scraping up the $3,000 per year that it costs her for independently grown medical marijuana, and that if she had to pay compassion center prices the cost would skyrocket to an unaffordable $16,000 per year. She said the governor’s proposal that reportedly computed the prices for per-plant tax tags “based on the idea that I somehow make $17,000 by growing my own medication, is flawed. I cannot make money on something I am consuming as my medication. I do not sell it. I am not a corporation to be taxed but a real live human with a catastrophic disease that causes constant pain and medical emergencies, and I am just barely getting by as it is.” The reduction in plant count to 6, instead of the current limit of 12 mature plants and 12 immature seedlings, would make it impossible for her to sustain her medically necessary supply, she said. “Plants are susceptible to mold, rot, bugs. They get damaged from too much humidity, heat fluctuations and interruptions in electricity. This is farming, anything can happen. If I only have one or two plants to work with at each stage I can’t possibly have a perpetual grow that provides my medicine year round, it just won’t work with those numbers.” She credited gifting as helping her get started in the medical marijuana program and also with bailing her out in an emergency: “If gifting hadn’t existed when I first started out, I wouldn’t even know what medicine helps me and what to avoid. I’ve also benefited from the gifting program when I lost my garden to a bug infestation.” If per-plant tax tagging for individual medical growers takes effect, she said, “I will be forced to either move to a friendly state like Maine or Colorado, or stay in Rhode Island and become a criminal growing outside of the program.”

Ellen Lenox Smith, a patient who said she was a former middle school teacher and formerly coached high school swimming as a master swimmer but has since had 23 surgeries for two separate incurable conditions, bluntly said that the costs of obtaining medical marijuana would become unaffordable to her, which would mean “the end of my life.” She had been very grateful until now to be in Rhode Island, which she described as a “state of compassion,” but “this proposal makes me feel as if my life doesn’t matter” to the governor. Her medical condition makes it impossible for her to work and earn the additional money she would need to pay compassion center prices, she said. “My job is to keep myself alive. I’m alive today because of this medication. I’ll be gone tomorrow without it.”

Patrick Rimoshytus, director of Green Cross of Rhode Island who said he is both a patient and caregiver, wore a firefighting helmet while speaking because, he explained, he was a former firefighter. (See “Green Cross of Rhode Island: Educating Cannabis Patients,” by Devin Fahey, Jan. 13.) More than half of his patients are undergoing cancer chemotherapy, he said. “We don’t need to reinvent the wheel because we have a program that works.” Medical cannabis users are not abstractions, but “It’s your neighbors. It’s your friends. It’s your co-workers.” Interviewed after his speech, he said that “23 other states have medical marijuana, but none tax it.” He predicted that the proposal if it takes effect “would push the caregivers who are already leery back into the underground market.”

Donna Hackett, who described herself as a patient and activist, said she survived stage 3 breast cancer and stage 3 lyme disease at the same time and had no success with conventional painkillers. “I was virtually a cripple for many years. The person you see standing here is only possible because of medical marijuana.” She said, “I cannot live without cannabis. I have not taken prescription drugs for years, because I wanted to live.” Rather than increase restrictions and impose taxes on medical users, she advocated legalizing recreational use: “Make it legal and leave us alone.” If nearby states legalize but Rhode Island does not, she predicted “a mass exodus to Massachusetts like there is for everything else.”

Jared Moffat, executive director of Regulate RI and state political director of the Marijuana Policy Project, said that the proper way to obtain tax revenue from marijuana was to end prohibition against recreational use so that it could be regulated and taxed like alcohol, not to burden the medical program and impose additional costs on patients. (See “Cannabis: Jared Moffat, RI Point-Man for Legalization,” by Michael Bilow, Dec. 16, 2015.)

James Fortier, of the newly formed Legalize Marijuana in RI group, was the most critical of the speakers. He alleged that through researching public records he had obtained evidence that compassion centers, although non-profit, were purchasing services from for-profit consulting and real estate firms, and that the governor’s proposal masked an attempt to replace independent growers and set up commercial growing operations that would then be in a position to capitalize on eventual legalization. He cited interlocking or overlapping directorates shared between the non-profit and for-profit sides of the industry.

Several state legislators attended, all supportive of the protesters. Rep. Robert Nardolillo from Coventry, a Republican representing District 28, had previously on Feb. 16 released a statement strongly condemning the proposals and he echoed that statement even more emphatically when interviewed, describing them as a “huge overstep by the governor” and “deplorable, absolutely deplorable.” Professionally a funeral director and involved in the hospice care movement, Nardolillo said, “Patients now can barely afford it on their own…This medication [medical cannabis] is a miracle in some sense. The evidence is there: What you shut down will be patients in chronic pain.” In answer to a question whether the proposal seemed calculated to discourage an individual caregiver model and replace it with a compassion center model, he said, “The relationship between caregivers and patients is very important, one of trust and friendship.”

Rep. Scott Slater from Providence, a Democrat representing District 10, succeeded his father, Thomas C. Slater, in the General Assembly. The elder Slater died in office while publicly advocating and using medical marijuana to combat the side effects of cancer chemotherapy, sponsoring the original law authorizing its use, and the Providence compassion center is named in his memory. The younger Slater said he was opposed to the governor’s proposal: “I don’t think we should tax sick people.” But, he said, “I have the solution” to the revenue problem, referencing a separate bill in the House, the “Marijuana Regulation, Control, and Taxation Act,” for which he is a principal sponsor that would legalize and tax recreational use under regulations similar to alcohol. (See “Cannabis – Another Shot at Legalization,” by Mike Ryan, Feb. 12.)

Rep. Doreen Costa from North Kingstown, a Republican representing District 31, expressed unequivocal opposition to the governor’s proposal regarding medical cannabis. “I hope this gets pulled from the budget,” she said. “You can’t tax the people who need this help the most,” describing the proposed per-plant fees for tax tags as “astronomical.” With regard to ending prohibition against recreational use, she said that her support was conditional depending upon how the expected tax revenues would be used. “Where is that money going to go? The big drain called the general fund? We never know where that money goes,” she said, but would support legalizing recreational use if the proceeds went “anywhere but the general fund.”

Ricky Bonilla, who was holding a sign but did not speak at the rally, said when interviewed that he was an Army veteran who served as a medic in the early 1990s. “I served my country, I did everything I was supposed to do, I have a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a law degree,” he said, but he got off prescription drugs with the help of medical cannabis. “I don’t know of a single vet who uses cannabis who even thinks of suicide.” Patients can grow their own medicine without having to disclose their entire medical history to an insurance company, he said, which was a significant advantage to many.

Surprisingly, the most conciliatory note toward the governor came from Zach Allen, the vice-president of RCRI401, a co-sponsor of the protest representing caregivers. He said “caregivers are essentially extensions of their patients,” and that the proposal “seems as if it was an attempt to control and regulate,” general goals that he does not necessarily oppose. He said that the governor’s office had reached out to him, but “I don’t think the state had the proper guidance” on the specifics of the current proposal. “We would like to work with them, not against them. It’s up to us to educate them.”