Bayou Bud Update: Refining Louisiana’s 2022 Medical-Cannabis Acts for 2025.

Introduction (00:02):
Welcome to Health Law Talk, presented by Chehardy Sherman Williams Health Law, broken down through expert discussion, real client issues and real life experiences, breaking barriers to understanding complex health care issues is our job.

Conrad Meyer (00:23):
You going to be going to jazz fest at all?

Rory Bellina (00:26):
I’d like to. I just don’t know if it’s going to happen.

Conrad Meyer (00:29):
Are you a jazz fest kind of guy?

Rory Bellina (00:31):
It depends. It depends on who’s playing and when and what kid stuff is going on. I’d like to go, but we’ll see. It’s always a last minute decision if we go or not.

Conrad Meyer (00:40):
Man, I’m so spoiled. I had a client that used to have the Brass Pass and they had the private VIP tent and I got spoiled. So

Rory Bellina (00:52):
Once you have

Conrad Meyer (00:54):
Thatt, I don’t want to go back.

Rory Bellina (00:55):
Right. You can’t stand,

Conrad Meyer (00:55):
I mean standing around and thousands of people and it’s hot and it’s sweaty, and then you got the communal porta-potties that line. The perimeter. I just can’t do it.

Rory Bellina (01:07):
Yeah, yeah.

Conrad Meyer (01:08):
I mean, this one had private bathrooms, like the air conditioned bathrooms.

Rory Bellina (01:11):
We’ve got that this weekend. Zurich in town. Zurich’s in Zurich starts today.

Conrad Meyer (01:16):
Yeah. So let me play this out for you because this topic today is really good. So imagine you’re at Jazz Fest, right? You come in town, you’re from Colorado, okay? Okay. Colorado is a very, very free state when it comes to medical marijuana. That’s what we’re talking about today. Or marijuana in general, right?

Rory Bellina (01:30):
Sure.

Conrad Meyer (01:31):
And you have a legal medical cannabis card from Colorado. You go into Louisiana to a medical pharmacy, a marijuana pharmacy, and guess what? They can now legally serve you. How in the world does that happen?

Rory Bellina (01:47):
That’s changed because before this year that you would have not been able to do that. So that’s been a development, and I think people are excited about it. I think Louisiana looked at it as a way of, well, if all of these other states are issuing these out, we’re missing out on capitalizing on these patients. So if they’ve got a valid card and we believe it’s valid, then let’s serve them.

Conrad Meyer (02:09):
Well. Yeah. I mean, how many people, I mean, think about that. How many people at Jazz Fest that may be coming from out of town that do have this? I mean, I would think it would be very high.

Rory Bellina (02:22):
And other states I know are a lot more lenient and relaxed on how they issue these cards. Some states, I know states vary, but I don’t think they have as strict of a guidelines as Louisiana does. Louisiana has been a little bit more lenient recently in what they’re issuing the recommendations for, but I know other states aren’t as much. So it will definitely be an influx of business for Louisiana from people from another state. Because before this law that we are going to discuss, before this went into effect, if you wanted to get it from Louisiana and you’re a non Louisiana resident, you had to be a Louisiana resident. So that’s now changed. And even if you were a Louisiana resident at that point, then you had to have a visit or a consult or a TELEVISIT with a Louisiana provider and get that recommendation. And there was time involved in that. You couldn’t walk in the same day and usually get those visits. And so you would have to have the cost of that visit. And then it was just specific to Louisiana. So if you plan to never come back here, there’s a sunken cost in that. Now, if you’re, like you

Conrad Meyer (03:28):
Said it was a worthless visit. I mean, did you look at this websites mean Look, with all due respect, I know we had some guests before, but it’s not even, is it a visit really? Is it just

Rory Bellina (03:38):
Up to the providers? Up

Conrad Meyer (03:40):
To the providers and they get right. I get it. But you know what though? It’s legal. All of it’s legal. Andre doing it, right? They’re doing the virtual visit. You pay to play and you get your deal and you can get your gummies or what have you, right?

Rory Bellina (03:52):
Yeah.

Conrad Meyer (03:54):
But now you can be out of state. Now you can come in from a different state, and guess what? You don’t need to do that.

Rory Bellina (03:59):
Yeah, I’ve got the act right here in front of me. We were going through it before, but

Conrad Meyer (04:04):
What is that act?

Rory Bellina (04:05):
This is going to be ACT 4 38. 4 38. And

Conrad Meyer (04:09):
That’s been signed into love for Governor Landry, is that right?

Rory Bellina (04:11):
Yes. Yes. Wow. So it says that each a visiting qualifying patient may obtain medical marijuana from a marijuana pharmacy upon producing evidence of his valid medical marijuana registry card or its equivalent. So this has been, they’ve had changes to it. I think this act originally goes back to 2022, but then there’s been changes to it. And so that’s where

Conrad Meyer (04:36):
I saw that. So it started in 2022, but then I guess they must have reintroduced it in this year, or was it last year?

Rory Bellina (04:44):
Yeah, there’s been changes to it. I didn’t go through the full history. That’s,

Conrad Meyer (04:48):
But it’s signed into law now,

Rory Bellina (04:50):
Correct. Because before it was much more limited. They’ve made changes to it, and so I

Conrad Meyer (04:54):
Guess we’re expanding. Why don’t they just say, you know what? We’re going to legalize marijuana. I mean, why

Rory Bellina (04:59):
We’re, we’re going to

Conrad Meyer (05:00):
Get there. We just not jump through the hoops anymore.

Rory Bellina (05:03):
I think the change that they’ve added now is for this one, is that each time this out of stater, in your example for Colorado, they’re required to certify on a form approved by the board that they have been diagnosed with a debilitating condition. And then they have to list their name, address, phone number, and they have to sign off saying that they will not divert this to anyone else. So that’s the checks and balances, that’s the hook that’s been put into place. And that the pharmacies have to track this. They have to make a copy of the card, a copy of their driver’s license, and they have to retain these records as

Conrad Meyer (05:42):
Well. Got it.

Rory Bellina (05:43):
And they have to verify all this before they sell anything to them as well. And they have to also check to make sure that there’s no sort of issues with this patient. So a lot more work on the pharmacy side, but it opens up the doors literally to outstate

Conrad Meyer (05:59):
Patients now the tourist to Right. That come in him. Yeah. Well, you know what? I’m glad to see it expanding. I mean, I agree with you. At some point they just need to lay down and say, you know what? All these little hoops and things, because with it, that wasn’t the only bill. I mean, we’ve got multiple bills on this. So what’s the next one? I’m curious to

Rory Bellina (06:23):
See. Let’s talk about,

Conrad Meyer (06:24):
You want to go to the nps?

Rory Bellina (06:26):
Yeah, let’s talk about that one.

Conrad Meyer (06:28):
Everybody who knows an np, right? Y’all are going to have so many friends. I mean, the nps are going to be very popular people in Louisiana.

Rory Bellina (06:37):
So this one also dates back to 2022, but there’s been changes to it. So this is act 4, 4 4. And this

Conrad Meyer (06:44):
Again signed into law,

Rory Bellina (06:46):
Correct? Correct. Authorizes certain NPS and medical psychologists to evaluate and recommend patients for medical marijuana. So this one, let me go through this one and see what the changes were. But yeah, before it was, so the changes to the bill, which has now been written into law, it was that before it was defined as a physician had to do all of this, and they’ve scratched out the word physician and now they have licensed health.

Conrad Meyer (07:15):
But let’s say this wasn’t done in 2020. It looks like it was done in 2022.

Rory Bellina (07:21):
And now they’ve changed. They’ve made changes. And basically if you go through the changes, they have now removed most of the references to physician, and now it’ll either say licensed health professional, authorized, clinician authorized coalition.

Conrad Meyer (07:37):
So let’s be clear, this was passed in 2022, but went through a few minor changes and now is in

Rory Bellina (07:42):
Effect. Correct. So all the references where it says physician, physician’s order doctor, patient, now it’s clinician, clinician, patient relationship authorized clinician.

Conrad Meyer (07:52):
That’s unbelievable. I’m surprised that we didn’t get on this radar

Rory Bellina (07:56):
Before. So it’s interesting because the board of nursing typically takes a much more conservative approach on what they’ll, or they at least say their nurse practitioners can do. There are certain things that

Conrad Meyer (08:09):
Nurse, well, it’s not just them, it’s medical psychologists. So we can do both. We can do both. But yes.

Rory Bellina (08:14):
But this is an interesting expansion because before a lot of these clinics, when they needed someone to do these patient evaluations, you had to pay a doctor to do it, which obviously costs more. So I could see a lot of these companies that you mentioned, Conrad, that are doing these evaluations instead of now having a doctor on your staff. You can have an NP on your staff at more of a cost savings to you if hopefully that gets passed on to the patients, but now you have, so

Conrad Meyer (08:41):
The gummies might drop down 20%.

Rory Bellina (08:44):
I don’t know. Maybe the visit might drop down 20%. I don’t think the products are changing. Similar to ED departments, they have nurse practitioners and PAs, because doctors are just too expensive to staff it. Well, I could see where now there’s the

Conrad Meyer (08:57):
Value of this,

Rory Bellina (08:58):
There’s going to be the value, and you’ve got more NPS than MDs that want to do this. Probably. It’s going to be interesting though to see now the NPS insurances are going to have to cover this, and hopefully their insurances are caught up with this.

Conrad Meyer (09:11):
Okay, but how many medical malpractice suits you going to get from someone who received marijuana? I don’t see that happening. That’s

Rory Bellina (09:19):
Your realm.

Conrad Meyer (09:20):
I don’t know if that’s going to happen. That’s a little out there, but I could see.

Rory Bellina (09:24):
But if you recommended it for someone,

Conrad Meyer (09:26):
How are those nps though? Even if you had a friend, right? A friend of mine, if you friend with an np, suddenly those people are going to be hot topics, man.

Rory Bellina (09:34):
Or if you recommend it for someone that has an adverse reaction to it, here

Conrad Meyer (09:39):
Go get some gummies here. I’m going to write this script for you,

Rory Bellina (09:42):
Right? Yeah.

Conrad Meyer (09:43):
Oh my gosh.

Rory Bellina (09:43):
Yeah. Alright. That was a good one. That was a good one. I liked that. That was a good one. What else did we have in,

Conrad Meyer (09:50):
I like the one, so this is the one I really like here too. I have not seen this play out in the law enforcement realm, but

Rory Bellina (09:57):
Which one is this?

Conrad Meyer (09:58):
That 4 73 House Bill Act 4 73.

Rory Bellina (10:03):
Oh yeah.

Conrad Meyer (10:03):
You see this one? This is

Rory Bellina (10:05):
More of a criminal.

Conrad Meyer (10:06):
It’s a criminal thing. But look, it says house bill 6 29. Again, this is 2022. If this has been enacted, I would love for law enforcement or someone to let us know how this is. It’d be really interesting to see this, but it prohibits the search of an individual’s residence based solely on the smell of marijuana without a warrant. So you can no longer use smell of marijuana as probable cause to enter without a warrant.

Rory Bellina (10:34):
That’s interesting because I watch, I’m a huge fan of cops and all these TV shows a law order. You always see the police stops when I

Conrad Meyer (10:42):
Smell marijuana, I’m coming in.

Rory Bellina (10:43):
Or you get to stop that traffic stop and they smell marijuana and

Conrad Meyer (10:47):
Your car,

Rory Bellina (10:48):
There’s their PC to search the car.

Conrad Meyer (10:49):
Right.

Rory Bellina (10:50):
That’s interesting.

Conrad Meyer (10:51):
I would love to see if we ever have a law enforcement come on. I

Rory Bellina (10:55):
Would love, yeah, what’s their training been on this, or how’s their training now on traffic stop? Because that is a huge thing. And there’s also another one that I wanted to talk about similar. It was a house bill 2 34, which I think kind of piggybacks for. This prohibits passengers and motor vehicles or operators of motor vehicles from smoking or vaping while operating. Well, I

Conrad Meyer (11:18):
Agree. That’s common sense. It

Rory Bellina (11:20):
Is. It falls under the D-U-I-D-W. I think they’ve just caught up the legislation because before so much of it was

Conrad Meyer (11:26):
Designed, but So wait, but help me. I get that. But let me ask you this. How do you, okay, with alcohol, you have the breathalyzer, right? Right. You have the physical onsite test, whatever they do,

Rory Bellina (11:38):
And you have the smell of alcohol, but now you don’t have the smell of marijuana.

Conrad Meyer (11:42):
Well, but I guess the thing is, okay, a couple things. If your car is an extension of your home,

Rory Bellina (11:51):
Depending on who you ask, who

Conrad Meyer (11:53):
You asked, right? And now you have a bill in Louisiana says you can’t have PC for the odor of marijuana in your house without a warrant. So if you’re stopping a car and you walk up and you smell marijuana in the car, that to me would extend the car. So in other words, now you can’t search the car based on PC if you smell marijuana, right?

Rory Bellina (12:16):
Yeah. You can’t search the car.

Conrad Meyer (12:19):
I mean, I would love to get in law enforcement. I would love to hear from somebody

Rory Bellina (12:22):
About this. Yeah. I would presume it would be an arrest under suspicion of D-U-I-D-W-I under this driving under the influence of marijuana. I presume the officer would just make the arrest based on that. I don’t know. That’s a good question.

Conrad Meyer (12:36):
I don’t know the answer to that. I would love,

Rory Bellina (12:38):
But you’re right. There is no, as far as I’m aware of, besides a hair test, urine blood

Conrad Meyer (12:43):
Test there. And maybe we can find somebody. I hope to find, let’s see if we can somebody on the show for that. I want to find that out.

Rory Bellina (12:47):
And on this topic, I know we’ve talked about this before and I’m sure people are trying to develop, there’s no instantaneous test for marijuana that I’m aware of. Didn’t somebody, I didn’t look it up. There’s the breathalyzer obviously for alcohol that everyone knows,

Conrad Meyer (13:04):
But they have the blood test. I thought they had some kind of test now,

Rory Bellina (13:08):
But what I mean is there’s no field test. If a car is stopped in a traffic violation and they’re suspected of DUI and you think it’s DUI marijuana, how do you test for that?

Conrad Meyer (13:19):
Well, I know there’s levels. In other words, I know the state law and I know the levels, but this says it’s certain amount of THC in your blood, you’re considered impaired.

Rory Bellina (13:27):
But at that point, if you refuse a voluntary blood test, now you’ve got to get, you can’t prove it. You have no proof. You’ve got to get a judge to sign a warrant for your blood to be drawn. Wait for that to be

Conrad Meyer (13:37):
Drawn.

Rory Bellina (13:37):
You’ve got to go to the hospital, get it drawn, wait for it. There’s no instant test.

Conrad Meyer (13:42):
No,

Rory Bellina (13:42):
I mean maybe, I don’t know. Not that I know of. I don’t know of an instant test either.

Conrad Meyer (13:47):
That’s interesting. So wait, we have a whole slew. This is not the only, let me see. This is not the only thing here. Okay, so that’s easy. The other ones are kind of just, I guess they collect fees from individuals who produce medical marijuana to the department of, so basically another revenue source. I mean, I would love to know how much revenue we get from this, how much revenue. I mean, it was kind of like gambling. Remember that long time ago, maybe, I dunno, you might have been young, but the casino licenses, nobody won a casino and then Governor Edwards brought ’em in and now you’re not getting rid of ’em. The casinos are here to stay and they produce a ton of revenue. I would love to know how much revenue medical marijuana produces in Louisiana. I mean, it’s got to be a lot.

Rory Bellina (14:37):
It has to be a lot. Because you have to buy it from to be,

Conrad Meyer (14:41):
There’s only one grower, right? Isn’t it

Rory Bellina (14:42):
LSU

Conrad Meyer (14:43):
Or there’s two.

Rory Bellina (14:44):
Yeah, there’s two growers and then there’s other companies that are I think authorized to be purchased from there. Out of state,

Conrad Meyer (14:51):
You have a grower, right? Then you have what? A distributor. So you have to have ’em separate. And the grower, I think is like LSU, like some university?

Rory Bellina (14:57):
Yeah, LSU in Southern, I think.

Conrad Meyer (14:59):
Right. And then that’s it. That’s the only growers that can happen. That’s it. It’s a university. But then I think there’s some sort of a middleman.

Rory Bellina (15:06):
Yeah, they sell to the biggest one

Conrad Meyer (15:10):
Processors or

Rory Bellina (15:10):
Something. The biggest one that I can think of is Good Day Farms. That’s probably the biggest one. The no name. And

Conrad Meyer (15:16):
Then those people then distribute it to pharmacies.

Rory Bellina (15:20):
Correct. I see. Correct. Yes,

Conrad Meyer (15:21):
That’s

Rory Bellina (15:22):
Correct. So

Conrad Meyer (15:22):
Yes. Interesting. I mean, it’s got to be huge.

Rory Bellina (15:26):
I would think so. And it’s only expanding because I was just looking at the list before we started to get a recommendation. And it’s interesting, one thing I was thinking about before is you’re starting to see the shift in the language from the legislator. This is probably not exciting to talk about, but I’ll talk about anyway. You’re seeing the shift in the language from therapeutic marijuana to medical marijuana.

Conrad Meyer (15:48):
Why is that?

Rory Bellina (15:50):
I don’t know. I don’t know. Therapeutic part of marijuana. Everyone calls it medical marijuana, but for the beginning of time when this started in Louisiana, it was always known as therapeutic marijuana. Now it’s starting to be referenced in all these actions. That’s kind of weird though,

Conrad Meyer (16:03):
Because they’re expanding

Rory Bellina (16:04):
Medical,

Conrad Meyer (16:05):
But they’re expanding it now.

Rory Bellina (16:06):
Well, at first we started with I think two conditions, and then we went up to 14, and then we went up to 16.

Conrad Meyer (16:13):
What are we now?

Rory Bellina (16:14):
Well, the 16th one, or actually the last one was any condition. It was any condition to catch all. Yeah. That authorized clinician in his clinical experience considers debilitating and is qualified. So

Conrad Meyer (16:27):
That’s a catchall.

Rory Bellina (16:27):
The catchall is yes. Yeah, the catchall is just based on

Conrad Meyer (16:31):
Whatever. I could just make it up. Yeah, I think they need it here. Have a script. You know what the funny thing is is I know there’s a ton of older people that take the

Rory Bellina (16:40):
Gummies. Absolutely

Conrad Meyer (16:42):
A ton. And I don’t know if they just do it to go to sleep at night or I dunno what it is.

Rory Bellina (16:46):
I’m sure it helps with sleeping with pain. Therefore, if you don’t want to take Tylenols and aspirin, if you don’t want to take opioids, I think with pain it’s very helpful. Like you mentioned sleeping.

Conrad Meyer (16:57):
I was surprised when I talked to some people in my parents’ generation when I said, do you guys take gummies? They knew exactly what I was talking about. They were like, oh yeah, I got the Delta Z five, I got the beta bomb. I’m like, what the,

Rory Bellina (17:18):
It’s lost. They knew it. Yeah. It’s slowly, not slowly. It’s losing its stigma I think a lot faster than it did. It’s just time.

Conrad Meyer (17:26):
Right. Rory, don’t you think? I mean, I don’t do drugs. I don’t smoke marijuana, don’t do anything. But I mean, when you look at this on paper, I mean it’s like at one point do you say, man, let’s just cut.

Rory Bellina (17:38):
When you look at the effects of marijuana versus alcohol, if you’re having to choose between the two, you would want to choose marijuana at

Conrad Meyer (17:47):
Least. Look, lemme tell you, alcohol is a whole different topic for me. I mean, look, I was alive and I grew up in the age where Louisiana’s alcohol was 18, it was 18 years old. I’ll never forget this. And of course the federal government tried to take the highway funds away from Louisiana.

Rory Bellina (18:04):
So was the mothers against drunk drivers

Conrad Meyer (18:06):
Were mad and all that. I get that. But lemme tell you, if you have the ability to vote at 18, form a company, go to war, drive a tank, a helicopter and kill people.

Rory Bellina (18:17):
Buy cigarettes,

Conrad Meyer (18:18):
Buy cigarettes,

Rory Bellina (18:19):
Lottery tickets,

Conrad Meyer (18:20):
Right? Guess what? You can have a beer. I’m sorry. I get it. I think terrible decision. Terrible decision. Because what all these kids do is go crazy when they go to college and they’ve lived under a state that’s 21 and they’re maybe some overbearing parents. I don’t know. I’m not advocating that, but I’m just saying they go. But same here. The marijuana law. How, at what point do you just say, let’s just cut the red tape.

Rory Bellina (18:47):
So do you think that, and I think we’re going there, I think every state is making their way towards, it’s just going to be completely legalized. Like alcohol is based on age restrictions. But what are the negative consequences of doing that?

Conrad Meyer (19:03):
I mean,

Rory Bellina (19:03):
Besides just the negative consequences of alcohol. I

Conrad Meyer (19:07):
Think it’s the same.

Rory Bellina (19:09):
The concern is that it, it’s going to get in the hands more of minors. It could be abused more. We

Conrad Meyer (19:15):
Can get in hands of minors now.

Rory Bellina (19:16):
I know.

Conrad Meyer (19:17):
I mean, I’ll be honest with you, I think you can’t police everything,

Rory Bellina (19:20):
But it’s a lot harder right now if you want real marijuana from one of these growers that comes through like a distributor like we talked about, you’ve got to get, is

Conrad Meyer (19:31):
It really that hard though?

Rory Bellina (19:32):
Well, you’ve got to make the visit and you’ve got the doctor’s got to verify your information.

Conrad Meyer (19:38):
Then

Rory Bellina (19:38):
You after that and you pay your fee for that. And then after that you have to go to the pharmacy. They again, verify everything. There’s a lot more steps in place to

Conrad Meyer (19:47):
Actually, they’re definitely more steps. I agree with that. But is there really an impediment? I would love to know. Here’s the question. And look, I respect those guys if they want to make the money doing that. Absolutely. I think it’s a great business model right now given the law. But I would love to know of the number of patients that come to you for screening. How many are rejected?

Rory Bellina (20:11):
Yeah. I don’t know.

Conrad Meyer (20:12):
I would say less than 1%. I mean, I would danger. And that’s when you know, just know. That’s what I’m saying is now the time just to cut the tape and just say, you know what guys? This is just some sort of a facade that we put up because we want to feel good about ourselves that we’re trying to protect everybody. But maybe it’s time. Look, I’m just saying, I guess this is a libertarian in me, right? I guess I know

Rory Bellina (20:37):
Free markets. Free

Conrad Meyer (20:38):
Markets, right? But I read this stuff.

Rory Bellina (20:42):
Have you ever seen the receipt from one of these dispensaries out of state? I was looking at one. What

Conrad Meyer (20:47):
Does it look like?

Rory Bellina (20:47):
Years ago? I think it was a dispensary out of

Conrad Meyer (20:50):
Chicago. Is it color coded? Is it based on what you buy?

Rory Bellina (20:52):
It was a receipt based out of Chicago, Illinois.

Conrad Meyer (20:55):
Chicago has medical marijuana.

Rory Bellina (20:57):
I believe it was Chicago. I did not know that. Don’t quote me on that, but I believe it was Chicago. It was somewhere in that area. And I remember when you added up all the taxes and fees, it was over 30%. It was close to 40%. So if you think of that money going into that county or that penny power state, I mean, look at Colorado. I mean, you can’t spend it fast enough because they’re making so much money on it. So I think that is going to be the driving impediment for these more impoverished states, including Louisiana, is that let’s legalize this thing and we’ll tax it at 20% or something high enough to keep the barrier where,

Conrad Meyer (21:38):
And look, I respect our lawmakers and I respect our politicians to a point, but I find that we’re always sort of behind the curve. And what I mean by that is we had an opportunity, several opportunities. Let’s just go back to casino gaming.

Rory Bellina (21:52):
It had to be on the water.

Conrad Meyer (21:53):
Had to be on the water. You had to have a boat. And the thing is, those boats never left the dock.

Rory Bellina (22:00):
No, no. They were just floating. Floating basically concrete to the

Conrad Meyer (22:03):
Floating barges. And so then we gave Mississippi the opportunity to create the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Basically

Rory Bellina (22:08):
Land-based casinos.

Conrad Meyer (22:09):
Land-based casinos.

Rory Bellina (22:10):
We lost that. And now they’re killing it. They’re killing it. They’ve got the casinos, the hotels,

Conrad Meyer (22:15):
People fly into Louisiana to New Orleans, and then they bust ’em over to the Gulf Coast. And for what? We had an opportunity, we lost it. Then the online sports betting, remember that?

Rory Bellina (22:26):
Well, sports gaming, we got that fat. I know we’re off topic, but we

Conrad Meyer (22:30):
Totally off topic. We went in a rabbit

Rory Bellina (22:31):
Hole. Louisiana got sports gaming relatively quick. Mississippi still doesn’t have it.

Conrad Meyer (22:37):
I thought they did.

Rory Bellina (22:38):
No, they do not. Okay. They do not.

Conrad Meyer (22:40):
They have it. I thought they did because people were going to the casinos and doing the sports

Rory Bellina (22:44):
Bet there they have it in the casinos only. They don’t have it through mobile apps. I

Conrad Meyer (22:48):
See.

Rory Bellina (22:48):
So if you want to bet on the Saints game, you have to go to a land-based casino that’s licensed in Mississippi, or you have to be within like

Conrad Meyer (22:58):
A hundred percent. So we’re ahead of the game on that.

Rory Bellina (22:59):
We’re ahead of, because they do not have all the apps that we do where you could bet anytime of day that’s

Conrad Meyer (23:02):
Amazing from your house. But now the same thing with medical marijuana. I thought before I was waiting for to see our lawmakers, were going to look at Colorado and other states and say, look how much revenue’s coming in. I think they’re killing it. And maybe we look at that as an alternative. But I mean, I guess, I don’t know.

Rory Bellina (23:22):
I’m

Conrad Meyer (23:22):
A lawmaker, but I’m seeing all this red tape where we could just simply just do it.

Rory Bellina (23:25):
I think the holdup is that as kind of progressive as we think Louisiana being, especially us being in south Louisiana and the New Orleans metropolitan area, a lot of north Louisiana and northwest Louisiana do not want this. This, they don’t want alcohol. They don’t want alcohol on Sundays. I agree. They think that this is the devil’s lettuce and it’s going to lead to all kinds of problems.

Conrad Meyer (23:49):
I agree. Look, I got friends in the west and I have friends up north. I mean, I’ve got friends all the way up in Minden and all the way up to Shreveport. And I got to tell you, you’re right. I agree with

Rory Bellina (24:00):
You. So I think that as much as we want to enter pushing for it, I think that there’s just as much opposition to this, and I think that this is the middle ground and we are just taking these incremental baby steps. But at some point, the people in Baton Rouge are going to have to figure out what to do with this and capitalize on it.

Conrad Meyer (24:18):
So look, basically now, so basically if you’re out of state, you got a medical license, medical marijuana license, guess what? You can come here and get your cannabis,

Rory Bellina (24:24):
Fill out some paperwork

Conrad Meyer (24:25):
Done

Rory Bellina (24:26):
And get it

Conrad Meyer (24:26):
And done. And then if you’re a nurse practitioner, guess what? You just got your friendship circle expanded greatly

Rory Bellina (24:33):
And your job opportunities are now even better. That’s great. Yeah.

Conrad Meyer (24:36):
That’s wonderful. Well, gee whiz. I mean, I had no idea. Yeah, I really wish, and I hope we do. I hope we get a lawmaker

Rory Bellina (24:45):
Talk about how they practice a law enforcement guy, how their practices have changed now with this expansion. No, that’s a good topic to have.

Conrad Meyer (24:52):
Well, I think that’s good enough for me. Look, I hope everybody that this was a good informative show when we first saw this. I’m like, man, this is great, Rory. I love this topic, and I got to tell you seven bills marijuana governor signed. I mean, I’m just like, we’re moving. It moves at a brisk pace, so who knows what’s going to happen two years from now. It’s

Rory Bellina (25:13):
True.

Conrad Meyer (25:14):
Everyone willing? Thank you so much for being listeners to our show. Please drop us a line or a comment. Give us that five star rating for us, and if you have a topic you want to discuss or you want to follow up with us on anything that we discussed here, send us an email. You’ll have a great day. Enjoy.

Introduction (25:30):
Thanks for listening to this episode of Health Law Talk presented by Chehardy Sherman Williams. Please be sure to subscribe to our channel. Make sure to give us that five star rating and share with your friends. Chehardy Sherman Williams is providing this podcast as a public service. This podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast does not constitute legal advice, nor does this podcast establish an attorney-client relationship. Reference to any specific product or entity does not count as an endorsement or recommendation by Chehardy Sherman Williams. The views expressed by guests on the show are their own, and their appearance does not imply an endorsement of them or their entity that they represent. Remember, please consult an attorney for your specific legal issues.