TAMPA, Fla. — Dorothy Vaccaro told the 21-year-old woman that at her age she probably wasn’t suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or cancer and, therefore, shouldn’t use medical marijuana.
When the woman said she uses it to calm her anxiety, Vaccaro told her that anxiety wasn’t a sufficient reason to take the drug.
Vaccaro advised the woman that she should instead consider Xanax, a drug that many consider more powerful, with widely known side effects.
But Vaccaro isn’t a doctor. She’s a Pinellas County judge. And the woman before her during this spontaneous consultation wasn’t a patient. She was a defendant in a misdemeanor DUI case.
The exchange, in a recording from a Jan. 12 hearing obtained by the Tampa Bay Times, underscores that seven years after medical marijuana was made legal in Florida, the drug is still met with resistance from the highest perches of the criminal justice system.
Even as more than 800,000 patients across the state have been allowed by doctors to take the drug, Vaccaro rejected the woman’s use of medical marijuana while setting the terms of her probation and suggested a more potent alternative.
Judges are granted wide latitude to weigh in on pressing societal issues. And this exchange is just one example of this privilege. But on this day, for this case, did Vaccaro overstep?
Florida’s drug…
