Louisiana Voice

I recently had occasion to be at the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry (LDAF) to take a gander at some public records. I was ushered into a conference room where all the requested records were stacked on a table.

About halfway through the process of copying the records, we (LDAF press secretary Veronica Mosgrove and I) were uprooted to an adjoining room as various official-looking persons began filtering into the conference room. They were carrying documents and looking all serious and important and ignoring me like any self-respecting individual of such prominence naturally would. So of course, I asked who they were and what they were meeting for.

Veronica explained that they were some sort of ultra-serious group assembled to facilitate the coordination of the implementation of Louisiana’s new Revised Statute 40: 1046, Part X-E, aka the Therapeutic Use of Marijuana law.

Odd, I thought, because those who entered the room appeared focused and clear-headed, and none appeared to have the munchies, a condition that generally accompanies the use of cannabis. In fact, everyone seemed fairly alert and no one called me dude.

And with one exception, no one entered with that faraway, glassy-eyed stare so typical of those who indulge in ganja. Agriculture Commissioner Dr. Mike Strain was fashionably late and as he entered, Veronica introduced me to him and we shook hands. That’s when I noticed that he had what I like to call for a lack of a better term, that blank gladda-meetcha-gotta-move-on-I’m inna-big-hurry stare so common to elected officials. His eyes gave me the brief once-over as he quickly hurried into the meeting.

Pot had nothing to do with it; it’s the look they learn their first day in Politician College in Meet-n-Greet 101 where they’re taught to look at you but not actually see you. The only way to penetrate that defensive force field is with a special password, usually written on a check, in multiples of a thousand dollars. It’ll instantly melt away that glacial stare and earn you the big grin of warm recognition and the ever-elusive eye-to-eye contact, gestures reserved for special constituents—as in campaign donors.

But I digress.

Louisiana, for better or worse, is officially in the POT BUSINESS, thanks to the efforts of State Sen. Fred Mills (R-New Iberia), Louisiana’s 2008 Pharmacist of the Year and recipient of the 2010 Louisiana Family Forum’s Family Advocate Award, who pushed through Senate Bill 271 which became Act 96 of the 2016 legislative session upon Gov. John Bel Edwards’ signature.

And of course, there are rules governing the licensure of medical pot prescriptions. Lots and lots of RULES.

And it fell to Strain’s Department of Agriculture and Forestry to develop a plan for licensing a single producer for the (legal) cultivation and distribution to 10 pharmacies licensed to sell the product.

Okay, that makes sense. If we’re going to regulate something that is grown and cultivated from mother earth, it’s only logical that the Department of Agriculture have a hand in the decision-making process. No problem there.

And it’s also understandable that the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy will regulate the 10 pharmacies licensed to sell weed.

But there’s a kicker.

Buried deep in those rules is this:

“The Louisiana State University Agricultural Center and the Southern University Agricultural Center shall have the right of first refusal to be licensed as the production facility, either separately or jointly.” (emphasis added.)

Then, two paragraphs further down the list of rules is this gem:

“The Louisiana State University Agricultural Center or the Southern University Agricultural Center may conduct research on marijuana for therapeutic use…” (emphasis added.)

Given, it’s been a long—nearly five decades—time since I walked off the Louisiana Tech stage with my journalism diploma in hand and I know a lot has changed on college campuses. For one, I’m told freshmen girls at Tech no longer are required to be securely in their dormitories by 7 on week nights (10 p.m. on Fridays). They’re probably allowed to stay out until 9 weeknights and 11 p.m. Fridays by now. That’s a liberal college town for you.

But at the same time, I know some things probably have not changed.

And that’s why the decision to allow college students—agriculture students, no less—to research the best methods to grow marijuana is….well, interesting.

What could possibly go wrong?

What are the odds some enterprising students might decide to launch their own freelance farming/research enterprise?

Not that I would ever rat them out. I did that once already, albeit inadvertently, and once was more than enough.

When I was at Tech and simultaneously running the North Louisiana Bureau for The Shreveport Times and Monroe Morning World, I kept noticing one popular student, a Tech football player, leading a blind student to and from his classes each day. Impressed by this unusual alliance and touched by the player’s kindness, I sought an interview for a human interest story.

Near the end of the interview, he volunteered that, besides his friendship with the blind student, he had other interests that were not typical of football players. “I grow a garden,” he said. “It’s in the woods and I work in it every day.”

Naively assuming he was raising tomatoes, squash, brown crowder peas and such, I included that in the story. Lincoln Parish Sheriff George Simonton, a bit more perceptive and infinitely more seasoned in assessing human frailties than I, easily read between the lines. His deputies staked out the garden. A really nice guy was subsequently arrested, kicked off the football team and left school after his marijuana “garden” was raided. Of course, I was stunned and saddened. Never did I imagine what kind of garden it was, nor could I comprehend later why he ever alluded to it in the first place during the interview. I’m not a toker but never would I intentionally have outed him.

Finally, even further down, we find this language:

“No person licensed pursuant to this Subsection shall subcontract for services for the cultivation or processing in any way of marijuana if the subcontractor, or any of the service providers in the chain of subcontractors, is owned wholly or in part by any state employee or member of a state employee’s immediate family, including but not limited to any legislator, statewide public official, university or community or technical college employee, Louisiana State University Agricultural Center employee, or Southern University Agricultural Center employee.”

That’s as it should be. That complies with the state’s ethics rules governing state employees and elected officials. Of course, ethics rules are often ignored by those in certain positions in state government.

For example, nowhere in the 4,500-word list of regulations does it prohibit a legislator who happens to be a pharmacist from obtaining one of those 10 licenses to sell medical marijuana.

Hmmm.