After voters overwhelmingly legalized medical marijuana a year ago, Florida was supposed to issue ten new pot-growing licenses to nurseries by October 3. But the state has dragged its feet in implementing nearly every aspect of the law, from issuing cards to patients to passing basic regulations on who can smoke cannabis and when they can smoke it.
Last month, Gov. Rick Scott proposed a three-day limit on opioid prescriptions as part of his upcoming legislation and $50 million investment to combat the opioid crisis in Florida. Though the details of Scott’s bill are still unclear, some physicians and patients such as Paulson say the limitation is too broad and could make it all but impossible to treat chronic pain and terminal illnesses.
So many terrible ideas come out of Tallahassee every year that it’s often hard to guess whether a random law was enacted in Florida or Saudi Arabia. Case in point: One of those two states passed a law in March 2016 forcing anyone giving “advice” about abortion — from a…
There are 21 million people in Florida. Sen. Marco Rubio is almost certainly about to vote for an Obamacare repeal bill that, according to a study released yesterday, would likely cut health coverage from 3.2 million of them. That’s roughly 15 percent of the state.
While tens of thousands of Floridians were without electricity or internet this week, Senate Republicans were busy devising new and ingenious ways to strip health care from millions of people. Now that most Floridians have cell-phone service again, they should spend the week calling Sen. Marco Rubio…
South Florida has the highest HIV rate in America thanks in part to intravenous drug use. But the head of the Miami’s police union, Javier Ortiz, has now repeatedly called for the city to kill a program designed to slow the rate of AIDS infections and save the lives of IV drug addicts.
Ask 100 Floridians to rattle off Publix’s slogan and guaranteed, 100 of them will be able to answer: “Where shopping is a pleasure.” The state’s most beloved supermarket has a stellar reputation for killer chicken tender Pub subs, free deli meat slices, and employee-friendly policies. But beyond the buffed-to-a-shine aisles…
Senate Republicans released a new version of their Obamacare repeal yesterday. They called the bill a “tamer” version of the barbaric law they originally pitched, but the new measure would still hack deep cuts to Medicaid funding for poor people. According to all currently available science, cutting Medicaid kills poor people…
Sen. Marco Rubio seems likely to vote for the Senate’s Obamacare replacement that effectively puts poor people through a meat grinder and turns them into Soylent Green. Both the Senate and House plans sharply cut Medicaid funding for the poor while giving the rich massive tax cuts, and are among the least popular bills in American history, according to recent polls.
Nothing motivates your constituents quite like actively trying to kill them. Today left-leaning organizers across the nation are protesting at Senate and congressional offices, demanding that GOP lawmakers abandon plans to nuke Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act and to replace them with the legal equivalent of paper clips and twine.
In a Facebook Live session with his constituents last week, Sen. Marco Rubio laid out the things he wanted to see in the U.S. Senate’s then-secret Obamacare repeal package. He listed four criteria that would push him to vote in favor of the plan: Whether it protected people with preexisting conditions…
On May 11, Miami Rep. Carlos Curbelo wrote an op-ed in the Miami Herald defending the fact that he voted for the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the GOP bill to repeal Obamacare. Throughout 716 condescending words, Curbelo avoided discussing the fact that the new AHCA takes an $880 billion shark bite out of Medicaid funding for the poor and needy.
Finding affordable housing in Miami has never been harder, and the problem affects the whole city: It worsens traffic gridlock by forcing workers to live at the edges of the county, drives out bright college grads who would otherwise stay, and can even prevent domestic violence victims from leaving their abusers.
A note to U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo’s staff: Just stop letting him talk about health care. Earlier this month, the Miami Republican was one of the final swing votes that ensured the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which cripples Obamacare, passed on to the Senate. After his constituents excoriated him for trying to rip away their health care, he wrote a condescending, insulting, and lie-ridden op-ed in the Miami Herald calling his critics leftists and crybabies for asking for basic access to health insurance. That did not go over well.
As another hot AF summer commences in Miami, mosquitoes will once again be unavoidable. Testing is still underway as scientists work to develop a Zika vaccine, but in the meantime, public health officials’ best advice for preventing transmission seems to be just telling people not to get bit. In South…
The campaign to pass Amendment 2, last year’s state constitutional amendment that legalized medical marijuana for patients with illnesses including cancer and Alzheimer’s, was largely bankrolled by one of the wealthiest and most powerful trial lawyers in Florida, John Morgan.
Two South Florida congressmen are treating a vote to rip health care away from millions of Americans — the sort of thing that would kill people, including your grandparents and children — with the relative seriousness of choosing their dates for senior prom.
Florida’s House of Representatives proved today there is nothing its grubby little hands can’t screw up. After more than 72 percent of voters statewide voted to legalize medicinal marijuana for people with “debilitating diseases,” a term that includes cancer, AIDS, and Alzheimer’s, the Florida House today passed its own series of rules regulating the state’s new medical weed industry.
Florida’s United for Care campaign spent two full election cycles — 2014 and 2016 — drafting, fighting, and pushing Floridians to legalize medicinal cannabis for demonstrably sick people. Last year, 72 percent of Floridians voted to amend the state constitution to legalize medical weed for people with diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s. Now it’s up to the Florida Legislature to adopt medical marijuana rules.
Solutions to Miami’s slow-simmering Zika virus crisis have included the following: fumigating the city with possibly dangerous pesticides; releasing bats into the sky, Hunter S. Thompson-style; desperately avoiding Zika “hot zones”; and genetically modifying the Zika-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito so they all die.
Floridians are suffering from an epidemic of head trauma.
Miami has seen a lull in Zika cases lately, which makes sense because it’s low season for Florida’s mosquitoes. But once the weather warms up, clouds of Aedes aegypti will return with the virus. Fighting the virus hasn’t been easy. Pesticides aren’t very effective and have run up against public pushback. But a new study says another problem has also hampered anti-Zika efforts: the flood of memes, #fakenews articles, and straight-up incorrect reporting that followed the virus.
