It's been one week since the gavel last fell and the Kentucky House and Senate and the 2023 legislative session came to a close.

Kentucky's Senate majority floor leader, Damon Thayer, came to our studios yesterday to discuss what he views as the legislative wins.

During the short 30 day session, he pretended to a journalist.

And you are writing a headline about the 2023 legislative session.

How should it be remembered?

This General Assembly led by Republican supermajorities in the House and the Senate, did really big things.

And over the last few days, as I'm out and about, people recognize it.

I think there seems to be more enthusiasm about the work of the General Assembly after this session than any in recent memory.

And I've done 21 of them.

So 21 regular sessions.

Yeah.

So what do you think it is?

Are they mentioning sports betting and medical marijuana being legalized?

Is it the sweeping LGBTQ measure or what are they saying that they're grateful for?

Yes.

I love the.

Above.

All of the above.

I get thanked profusely for sports betting.

Medical marijuana.

SB 150 on limiting the actually making illegal procedures Transgender procedures on minors.

I was on the elliptical this morning at the gym and someone came up and thanked me for sports betting and Senate Bill 150 in the same sentence.

So it's it's good it's good for people to understand that their General assembly did a lot of hard work and big things that they want it done.

In 30 days, not in the last 30.

Days.

I would not have predicted it.

Well, you got a lot to live up to next year in 2024 when it's a 60 day session.

You know, I think we'll just slow down to just a couple of things, maybe make some tweaks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We passed the budget in the road plan and.

We've heard this before.

Let's rewind the tape back.

So let's talk about your evolution of your position on medical marijuana and one of your floor speeches when the bill came to the Senate was one word describes where you were and where you had arrived.

And it was compassion.

Is that all it is when it comes to your position on medical marijuana, or did you feel pressure from co It wasn't the pressure.

I mean, I don't change my mind very easily.

I'm of a certain age now where I'm pretty set in my ways that it really was ten years worth of hearing from people who had a variety of afflictions.

And the only relief that they can get is from medical marijuana.

And what I had to do, and this was hard, I had to separate the pot smokers, the people who just want their pot so they can smoke it recreationally.

And I had to separate them from the people who wouldn't even think of doing any sort of illegal drug or narcotic.

And it was this woman from Dry Ridge, a constituent of mine in Grant County.

And she said, you know, I agree with you on every other position that you have except on medical marijuana.

And she said, I really would like it if we could agree on that, too, because it's the only thing that would give her a relief.

And there have been lots of other people, the couple from Mason County who have been lobbying.

Eric and Michelle.

Crawford and Michelle Crawford, my friend Justin Lou and Lewandowski, we went from being very antagonistic to being friends now and people like him.

Lots a a good bartender friend of mine who's made me a lot of good old fashions over the years.

And even my 93 year old grandmother who lives in Michigan and uses a marijuana cream on her bad knees along with her shot of buffalo trace bourbon cream before bed every night.

That's how you let her be 93, right?

Well, she has discovered the fountain of youth.

Yeah, I would not question that at all.

Well, we do know and it was mentioned several times, that this bill doesn't go into effect until January 20, 25.

It gives the cabinet that same health cabinet a chance to promulgate the regulations and for the General Assembly to come back in 2024 and say, wait a minute, maybe this was murky language or maybe we can clean up things here.

Is that how you see it?

That's exactly right.

Senator Steve West and President Robert Stivers actually worked on this committee.

Substitute.

And even though he voted against it, President Stivers wanted it.

He knew we had the votes to pass it.

The dynamic in our caucus had changed.

And by the way, I kept my vote private.

When I walked into that committee meeting that day, there were less than five people in the world who knew I was going to vote yes.

And and he was not on that list, but he knew the dynamic in our caucus had changed with some of our new members.

And so he worked with Senator West to come up with the best committee substitute possible on a tight, narrowly focused bill.

But Senator Steve West was on with with me on the radio on Monday when I guest host of the Larry Glover Live show.

And even he said, look, there are probably some things in here that we need to continue tweaking and we can do that in 2024.

Plus, we'll have the results of the survey, the research survey that we've commissioned with taxpayer money at the University of Kentucky to study medical cannabis.

And maybe there will be some things in there that can give us some better direction on how to make adjustments to the bill.

And they can also add other conditions, chronic or terminal conditions to that list because of their research.

Right.

So it's pretty narrow now, but it could be expanded.

It could based on the research at Duke.

Yeah.

So regrets When I say regrets, I don't mean by what you did do, but about what didn't get across the finish line.

What do you wish would have made it better?

It's pretty tough to come up with what was left out.

I mean, we started with cutting taxes at the beginning of session on major steps to reform the mess at the Department of Juvenile Justice.

Thanks to Representative Kevin Bratcher and Senator Danny Carroll.

That was kind of in the middle to the end.

We banned great games, we passed sports betting, we passed medical marijuana, we passed a bourbon barrel tax.

I know, I know.

There are things I'm leaving out.

We did a host of workforce items.

It's pretty tough to be disappointed.

The one issue we didn't tackle, I think, is going to be something that will help define the next session, and that is school choice and a constitutional amendment on school choice and one of the things I really like about this session is we cleared the decks of a lot of big issues which will allow us next year to focus on the budget, the road plan And as far as I'm concerned, one of our priorities should be a constitutional amendment on school.

Choice, because that was filed this session, correct?

Right.

Just to put it out there.

And we made a decision not to pass any more school choice bills because they keep getting struck down by the court.

So that's why we think we need a constitutional amendment.

We decided not to put any constitutional amendments on the ballot because it can't happen until 2024.

So we wanted to kind of clear the decks of that.

But there are some constitutional amendments that were filed that will be under consideration in 2024 because they can't go on the ballot until an even numbered election year.

Tomorrow, part two of my conversation with Kentucky Senate Majority Leader Damien Thayer as he gets some more insight into what lawmakers could have on their docket in 2024.

That's tomorrow night on Kentucky Edition.

We hope you'll join us for that.