In his 12-year pursuit to reform medical cannabis laws in the Palmetto State, South Carolina Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, reintroduced the Compassionate Care Act on Jan. 14.
The legislation, Senate Bill 53, would establish a licensed and regulated market for commercial cultivation and sales of tested products and would require a medical cannabis cardholder to have a “bona fide physician-patient relationship” for their diagnosis of at least one qualifying condition outlined in the law.
However, “medical use” would not include smoking cannabis, although vaporization would be allowed under the bill. Home cultivation would also be prohibited.
When Davis pre-filed the bill last month, he told WSPA that doctors and patients would be empowered under its passage.
“It requires doctors in patient authorization, doctor supervision,” Davis said. “It requires pharmacists to dispense it. It is a very conservative bill because that’s what South Carolinians want.”
The allowable amounts of medical cannabis that a doctor could prescribe during a 14-day period include 1,600 milligrams of THC for edibles and tinctures, 8,200 milligrams of THC for vaporization oils and 4,000 milligrams of THC for topicals.
In its current form, the legislation lists a dozen qualifying conditions, ranging from cancer to multiple sclerosis, post-traumatic stress disorder (subject to evidentiary requirements) and “any chronic or debilitating disease or medical condition for which an opioid is currently or could be prescribed by a physician based on generally accepted standards of care.”
The legislation also makes an exception for terminal illnesses in which one’s life expectancy is less than one year. A “Medical Cannabis Advisory Board” would have the authority to add or remove qualifying conditions from the program, according to the bill.
“Cannabis is not a cure-all for every medical condition, nor would it be appropriate for every patient,” according to Davis’ official stance on the issue. “But it should be added to a physician’s inventory of treatment choices.”
Davis, who is co-sponsoring the 2025 bill with Sen. Stephen Goldfinch, R-Georgetown, sponsored similar legislation last session, when in February 2024 it passed in the Senate on a 24-19 vote before dying in House committee due to inaction.
RELATED: South Carolina Senate Approves Medical Cannabis Legalization Bill
That wasn’t the first time the South Carolina House blocked Davis’ legalization plans. In 2022, a previous version of the bill died on a procedural anomaly when a representative challenged its constitutionality because it included a tax provision, and revenue-raising bills must originate in the lower chamber under South Carolina law.
The 2025 Senate version of the Compassionate Care Act makes no such mistake: The bill does not include a provision to tax cannabis sales.
While the senator from Beaufort has been unsuccessful in his recent legalization attempts, he has been working on crafting legislation and advocating for a medical cannabis program for the past decade-plus.
Early in his senatorial tenure, Davis authored South Carolina’s first medical cannabis bill, a 2014 law that allows doctors to legally authorize epileptic patients to take cannabis oil to alleviate their seizures.
“The young girl that inspired me to file this bill, a 6-year-old named Mary Louise Swing in Charleston, has up to 150 seizures an hour, and with medication, conventional pharmaceutical medication, that gets knocked down to about 30-40 a day,” Davis told News19 in 2014. “But with CBD oil, anecdotal evidence is and others have gotten relief where the pharmaceuticals don’t provide it.”
While South Carolina allows for this limited reform, it remains one of eight prohibitionist states in the nation absent of a medical cannabis program, even a highly restrictive program such as in Texas, where THC is capped at 1%.
Under current South Carolina law, possessing any amount of cannabis is criminalized with the possibility of jail time, including a felony charge for possessing more than 1 ounce.
Under the Compassionate Care Act, the state’s Department of Public Health and Board of Pharmacy would have the authority to regulate a medical cannabis program, including licensing “therapeutic cannabis pharmacies” as the state’s dispensaries.
The bill establishes that the following numbers of qualified medical cannabis establishments be licensed:
- 15 cultivation centers
- 30 processing facilities
- 4 transporters
- 3 or fewer therapeutic cannabis pharmacies per county
- 5 independent testing laboratories
Meanwhile, the number of vertically integrated licenses to be awarded would be determined by a commission within the Department of Public Health.
However, local municipalities would have the option to prohibit medical cannabis establishments from operating in their jurisdictions or to govern the time, place and manner in which these establishments could operate, including compliance with zoning or land-use regulations.
One provision Davis included from previous renditions of the bill is a self-terminating trigger of the medical cannabis program five years after the state’s first sale takes place should state lawmakers choose not to renew the program.
“This act shall be repealed five years after first sales of medical cannabis from a therapeutic cannabis pharmacy to a qualifying patient,” according to the bill. “No later than 18 months prior to this repeal, the Department [of Public Health] shall survey all qualifying patients and designated caregivers enrolled in the program, certifying practitioners, medical cannabis establishments, and other stakeholders and invite public comment on whether the program should be re-enacted and if any changes should be made.”
Since California first legalized medical cannabis in 1996, no state program has backpedaled to reinstitute prohibition policies after the first sales have taken place.
