Sen. Folmer: Slow down on recreational marijuana; he wants medicinal cannabis explored to fullest first

By Jason Maddux

Sen. Mike Folmer says he knows that legal recreational marijuana use eventually will come to Pennsylvania. He just hopes to slow down the pace of its arrival.

“Recreational is going to come. It will come. But we are jumping ahead of the science right now. Here are my concerns. ... In every state that went from medicinal right into rec, the medicinal programs went down the tubes because no one cared about growing for medicinal. All the money was in the next buzz,” he told the Press & Journal in a recent interview.

The Lebanon Republican is known as “Marijuana Mike” for leading the effort in Pennsylvania to allow the medicinal use of cannabis, so he’s naturally protective of his efforts. Seeing the continued growth of medicinal cannabis in the state, in fact, is one of the reasons he ran for a fourth term last year despite his initial pledge to serve only three. His 48th Senate District includes Middletown, Royalton, and Lower Swatara and Londonderry townships.

“I’m not opposing this plan. I’m throwing a lot of the folks off here who say, ‘Folmer, you should be all over this.’ No, I’m for medicinal first. Because I got into it for the patients. The patients are the key here,” he said.

Despite Folmer’s hopes, recreational use appears to be on the fast track. In December, Gov. Tom Wolf tweeted that “it is time for Pennsylvania to take a serious and honest look at recreational marijuana.” Wolf in late January was on hand when Lt. Gov. John Fetterman announced he was going to travel to all 67 counties “to listen to everyone’s thoughts on whether they agree with this initiative or have recommendations,” Fetterman said. “We want to make sure all Pennsylvanians have a say.”

Those forums started this week in Harrisburg, Newport and Mechanicsburg.

According to philly.com, the latest in a series of bills to legalize marijuana in the state for adult recreational use was introduced in the Assembly on Feb. 4.

But to Folmer, legalizing recreational use is not only getting ahead of science but the law as well.

“I’m not afraid of the plant. The plant is 114 times safer than alcohol,” he said. “What we don’t know is this: We don’t have the proper testing as far as what is impaired driving with marijuana. This is the problem. Marijuana is not toxic. So it doesn’t want to leave your body. It will stay in your body for at least 30 days.”

So, for example, it’s Thursday evening and you smoked a joint Tuesday night. Your blood work could show that you drove impaired, he said.

“Is that fair to the citizen? And it’s not really not fair to the police, either, because they don’t really have a tool of how to designate impaired driving,” he said.

Folmer told the story of a truck driver with a commercial driver’s license who was using cannabidiol, or CBD, oil.

“It’s 0.3 percent THC [tetrahydrocannabinol, the main active ingredient in cannabis], which means you could drink 5 gallons of this stuff and the only thing you would get is diarrhea, probably. 

You couldn’t get a high from it if you wanted to. But it helped him. It helped him with his neuropathic pain. As a truck driver, he said it actually made me a better driver. He got flagged because it showed up” in his system. 

In order to get his CDL back, he had to go to rehab, Folmer said.

“He doesn’t even drink alcohol. He’s never done anything. He was just using CBD oil. It helped him sleep, and he said it made him a better driver, with his legs and shifting gears. He had to go through rehab as if he were a drug addict. What a waste. It’s totally crazy. But that’s because we don’t understand it.”

He also said it’s a “fallacy about the big money” that would come in through taxes.

“Yes, you’re going to get some revenues in there, but it’s not the cure-all of cure-alls,” he said.

Recreational marijuana also would not create new jobs, he said. 

“You’re going to take underground jobs and make them above-ground jobs. It’s going to be the same people. It’s just going to be legal,” he said.

Moving ahead with medicinal cannabis would mean a real chance to help with health care costs, he said.

“How much does a radiation treatment cost? How much does a chemotherapy treatment cost? 

How much does a bone marrow transplant cost? What if you were able to, through the proper science, getting the proper understanding of this, are able to start shrinking tumors, and what would the cost be comparatively speaking, and making health care a little more affordable now and breaking up this monopoly in our health care industry,” he said.

Folmer also harkened back to when he was a produce broker, and his job was to go to the fields. 

“Because I was a smaller dealer, to get myself a niche in the market, I would find out who the best growers for a packing company were. The best way to do that was to make friends with the pickers, because they were really good. They knew what was quality. 

“One time I was invited over to their camp. It was a Wednesday night and the big orders had to go out the next day. The first thing I smelled was pot. I thought, ‘Oh, man, these guys are getting stoned.

They’ll never get up! No one is going to pick. No one is going to do anything, and we’re not going to get these orders out.’ I’m talking to the guy and he says, ‘No, no, no. We work really hard. 

We’re sore.’ They weren’t doing it for partying. They were actually using it in a medicinal sense.

They were sore, and they were tired. At 5 o’clock every morning they were up, not hung over, not dehydrated.

“It helped them with their pain. It helped them sleep the whole night long. They woke up refreshed and ready to work.”

Eventually, he said, the plant should be regulated like lettuce and tomatoes “as long as there’s no E. coli and bacteria and so forth, because it’s going to be consumed.”

“But,” he said, “we’re not there yet.”