In 2023, the Kentucky General Assembly legalized medical cannabis for qualifying patients starting in January of 2025.

This year, lawmakers passed House Bill 829.

That bill speeds up the process for businesses that want licenses to sell medical cannabis.

The goal is to make sure they're ready to go when medical cannabis becomes legal in January.

On Mondays, Kentucky tonight, our panel of lawmakers talked about medical cannabis and the pros and cons of the new legislation.

This bill that we did pass here was taken up the dispensing part of things and not necessarily being on every corner of every street in in all of our communities.

So I like that part of it.

I'll be honest with you, I wish it would have stepped a little further and provided the pharmacy in there as well, because it is medical cannabis.

And so obviously that part of it didn't go through.

But you know what?

Like Senator Wheeler said, you know, things whatever we do, it's important to make sure that we help our families, provide them the tools.

And obviously, this part of it would be be be good for them.

I shared many of the concerns that were voiced that initially the bill was going to be a way to create barriers to people accessing medical cannabis.

We know that medical cannabis is very popular.

Kentuckians are in favor of it.

Quite frankly, it took us too long to pass it, but now we have passed it.

I was worried that we were taking a step back.

I was really glad to see, quite frankly, a lot of constituents.

People across the Commonwealth said, hey, hey, hey, we think that we're headed in the right direction.

Please don't take us down a different path.

And at the end of the day, I think the final bill was something that we could all live with.

See more of our discussion about the 2024 Kentucky General Assembly, including talk about the budget, the anti-crime bill, and more.

Online on demand.

Dawgs.

Hey, why tonight?