Sen. Tom Davis — The 12-Year Compassionate Care Campaign

Last verified: May 2026

Background

Tom Davis is a Republican attorney from Beaufort who has served in the South Carolina Senate since 2008. He represents District 46 (Beaufort and Jasper counties), home to MCAS Beaufort (F/A-18 Hornet and F-35 squadrons) and MCRD Parris Island (primary Marine Corps recruit training for the eastern United States). The military-installation density of his district has shaped the Compassionate Care Act’s heavily restricted, law-enforcement-friendly framework: a registered patient who works in a "public safety, commercial transportation, or roles operating heavy machinery" job is categorically ineligible under S.53, reflecting Davis’s sensitivity to the federal-employer reality of his constituency. See Beaufort + Parris Island page.

Davis chairs the Senate Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee, a powerful position for shepherding legislation. Over twelve years, he has built a working relationship with sometime-allies in the Senate (including across the aisle) and has invested significant political capital in the medical-cannabis effort — an unusual posture for a Republican in a deep-red state.

The Iterative Drafting Process

Davis’s drafting process has been iterative across sessions, designed to neutralize specific law-enforcement and social-conservative objections:

• No smokable flower. The combustion of raw cannabis is expressly prohibited even by registered patients. Permitted product forms are oils, tinctures, edibles (≤10 mg THC per serving), topicals, transdermal patches, suppositories, and vaporizable concentrates.
• No home cultivation. Distinguishes the proposed program from most other state medical-cannabis programs.
• Pharmacist dispensing. The dispensing model is built around "therapeutic cannabis pharmacies," each of which must hold a separate Board of Pharmacy specialty pharmacy license and employ a licensed pharmacist who provides a consultation at dispensing.
• Strict qualifying-condition list. Cancer, MS, severe nausea (treatment-related), epilepsy, glaucoma, PTSD (with evidentiary requirements), autism, Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, sickle-cell anemia, ALS, Alzheimer’s, terminal illness with <1 year life expectancy, and conditions for which a physician believes opioids are the standard of care and medical cannabis is a less harmful alternative.
• Public-safety / heavy-machinery / commercial-transportation exclusion. Patients employed in those roles are categorically ineligible.
• Two-physician requirement for ages 18–23. Patients under 18 require a parent/guardian application and route-of-administration agreement.
• Annual 3-hour CME requirement for certifying physicians.
• Vertical-integration limits. Caps on how many businesses any one owner may hold a 5%-or-greater interest in.

See what S.53 would do page.

The "Most Conservative Program in the Country" Framing

Davis routinely describes the Compassionate Care Act as designed to create "the most conservative medical cannabis program in the country." The framing is strategic: it targets center-right voters and Republican legislators who might be persuadable on a heavily restricted program but oppose any broader medicalization. By comparison:

• Florida (2016 Amendment 2): smokable flower allowed since 2019; ~900,000 patients; no home grow.
• Louisiana (2015 / functional 2019): smokable flower since 2022; ~50,000 patients; no home grow.
• Mississippi (2022): smokable flower allowed; ~50,000 patients.
• Alabama (2021, still not operational): no flower; no home grow.
• South Carolina (proposed S.53): no flower; no home grow; pharmacist consultation; restrictive qualifying-condition list.

Even by Southern medical-only standards, the proposed program is on the restrictive end.

The 2022 Vote: First Chamber Passage in SC History

S.150 cleared the Senate 28–15 on February 9–10, 2022 — the first time either chamber of the South Carolina General Assembly had passed a medical-cannabis bill. The vote represented the culmination of eight years of Davis’s patient lobbying. It also exposed the bill to the Article III § 15 origination-clause challenge raised by Rep. John McCravy III on May 4, 2022, which Speaker Pro Tem Tommy Pope sustained, killing the bill without a floor vote. See 2022 origination clause page.

The 2024 Redraft and Re-Pass

Davis spent the 2023 session redrafting to eliminate the offending tax language. S.423 in 2024 was a "tax-clean" bill designed to avoid origination-clause exposure. The Senate passed it 24–19 on third reading February 14, 2024 (with second-reading 26–17 on February 13). The bill was then routed to the House 3M Committee, where Chair Rep. Sylleste Davis (R-Moncks Corner) referred it to an ad-hoc subcommittee that held one hearing April 30, 2024 and let the bill die. See 2024 House 3M death page.

2025–26: S.53

S.53 introduced January 14, 2025. As of May 5, 2026, no 2026 hearing in either chamber. Sen. Davis told reporters earlier in 2026 that he "now has the votes" in the House — a claim contradicted by Speaker Smith’s public statements but not refuted by a head count Davis has shown to reporters. The bill remains stuck in the Senate Medical Affairs Committee under Sen. Verdin’s gatekeeping. Realistically, the 2026 session is a near-write-off; 2027–28 with a new governor is the next realistic window.

Why a Republican?

Davis’s Republican identity has been strategically essential to whatever progress the Compassionate Care Act has made. SC Republicans hold all statewide constitutional offices, both U.S. Senate seats, six of seven U.S. House seats, and supermajorities in both chambers. A Democratic-led medical-cannabis bill would have no path. Davis’s combination of (a) Republican credentials, (b) Beaufort/Parris Island military-district base, (c) iterative drafting addressing law-enforcement objections, and (d) sustained relationships with Sen. Stephen Goldfinch, Sen. Russell Sutton, and selected House Republicans is what has allowed the bill to twice pass the Senate.

Coalition Building Beyond the Senate

Davis’s reform coalition extends beyond the Senate to:

• Jill Swing, founder of the South Carolina Compassionate Care Alliance — mother of a child with severe epilepsy who has provided sustained public-facing advocacy since the Julian’s Law era.
• Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) — represented in SC by Senior Policy Analyst Kevin Caldwell.
• Brian Clark of the South Carolina Pharmacy Association: "That pharmacist is going to take an oath. I mean, we’re not just going to dispense this when it’s not warranted, you know, so there’s checks and balances in place when you have medical providers involved."
• Patient families — particularly Lowcountry and college-town families who have testified at the State House.

See reform coalition page.