Fla. judge denies defendant’s use of medical marijuana, suggests Xanax instead

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.

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.

Florida’s Medical Marijuana Laws

Florida’s medical marijuana law, passed in 2016, allows a qualified physician to authorize medical marijuana for patients for a variety of physical and mental conditions. Judges and legal experts say that the use of medical marijuana is often allowed for people on probation.

But during the Jan. 12 hearing, Vaccaro ordered a drug test and threatened to arrest the woman without bond if she kept using marijuana. (People on probation are typically barred from using drugs or alcohol except for prescriptions.)

“Anxiety can be done a different way, through alprazolam, right? Xanax,” Vaccaro said, suggesting the woman go to a primary care doctor. “So they can deal with that that way, and there’s a drug that they can give you.”

The judge said she might reconsider her decision if the woman got “all wiggy” on Xanax, or if another doctor wrote a letter in…