PROVIDENCE — Lawmakers yesterday set the stage to make the state’s medical marijuana law permanent during an action-packed night in which committees considered everything from mandatory HIV testing for newborns to voter initiative to background checks for foster parents.

Committees scrambled last night to clear bills in time to meet Friday’s committee-action deadline — a soft deadline, since House and Senate rules allow for the introduction of new bills later in the session with permission from the leadership, and lawmakers suspend the rules altogether as the session’s end nears.

The medical marijuana bill now goes to the full House, despite strong opposition from the governor and committee Republicans. A Senate panel is set to vote today on that chamber’s version of the legislation.

Yesterday’s committee vote follows an emotional hearing two weeks ago in which a host of chronically ill patients, doctors and their supporters touted the benefits of the law due to be repealed June 30 unless legislators take action. Last January, Rhode Island became the 11th state in the nation to legalize marijuana for medical purposes, after the General Assembly overturned Governor Carcieri’s veto.

The governor isn’t happy about legislators’ efforts to permanently extend the law, said his spokesman, Jeff Neal. “First,” Neal said, “this Rhode Island statute is in direct conflict with the federal ban on marijuana. Second, the governor shares the concerns of the state police that a state medical marijuana law promotes the illicit drug trade while also making marijuana more available to children and others not using it for medical purposes.”

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Thomas C. Slater, D-Providence, a cancer survivor, dismissed the criticism. “It’s not legalizing any drug dealers,” he said. “If you go over the limit” — for the number of plants an individual can possess — “you get arrested.”

Elsewhere in the building last night, the House Corporations Committee added one more ingredient to the potpourri of measures aimed at bringing down the cost of health insurance.

The bill headed for the House floor takes aim at the cost of health insurance for individuals. Currently, for people who do not qualify for insurance through an employer, and whose income is too high to qualify for government-subsidized insurance, the often-expensive Direct Pay plans offered by Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island are essentially the only option.

The bill charges insurers with bringing premiums down to “a really aggressive price point” — about $200 a month — said Matthew Stark, policy chief in the health insurance commissioner’s office.

That number represents 10 percent of the monthly wages of a person who makes three times the poverty level. Stark said there are 23,000 uninsured adults in the state who earn that amount or more, making them potential subscribers.

Blue Cross lobbyist Brian Jordan said the insurer opposes the bill because it would be asked to create another new type of policy, while it’s still working to follow lawmakers’ directions from last year — that is, to launch a low-cost health-insurance plan for small businesses.

The bill targets people who haven’t had insurance for at least a year, but it would not necessarily be limited to that group. While the new policies for individuals may ultimately have high deductibles and may not cover services some people consider important, the policies are better than no insurance, which is what the intended customers have now. Corporations Committee Chairman Brian Patrick Kennedy, D-Hopkinton, said that’s why he felt it was important to pass the bill this year.

“We’ve got too many people out there who still lack insurance,” he said.

Lawmakers in the House Committee on Health, Education and Welfare heard testimony last night from the mother and father of murdered North Kingstown woman Lindsay Ann Burke.

The 23-year-old was stabbed to death by her former boyfriend in 2005 after trying to break up with him for the third time. Burke’s parents, backed by Attorney General Patrick Lynch, are pushing for a bill that would institute a statewide curriculum to teach students in grades 7 to 12 about dating violence.

“Lindsay’s life was cut short by the act of an abusive murderer,” her father, Christopher Burke said, a picture of his smiling daughter propped on the table next to him. “What my family is trying to do is honor Lindsay.”

The committee did not vote on the proposal, but plans to this session, according to House spokesman Larry Berman.

Other bills headed for the House floor would:

Require health-insurance policies to cover infertility treatment regardless of a woman’s marital status. State law requires that insurers cover 80 percent of the cost of such treatments, with no limit on the total treatment cost. But they are currently required to offer that coverage only to married women.

Require state and national criminal background checks on prospective foster parents.

Require HIV and AIDS screening for newborns.Pregnant women would be able to opt out of pre-natal screenings.

One measure, however, is clearly not headed for passage, at least on the House side. The House Judiciary Committee voted down two bills on voter initiative, by Rep. Nicholas Gorham, R-Coventry, and Rep. Roger A. Picard, D-Woonsocket.

The bills would have allowed voters to place questions on the ballot directly, through a petition process.

Supporters of voter initiative say it would allow the public to write into law, after approval in a statewide referendum, ideas that would never make it out of the Assembly otherwise.

The problem is that voter initiative itself never makes it out of the Assembly. And rather than letting the bills simply languish in committee and die for lack of action, the committee gave them the dubious distinction of killing them with a public vote.

Gorham attributed the votes to “an attempt to curry ever more favor with the public employee union leaders,” who registered opposition.

Gorham says voter initiative would give voters “a means of stopping the incessant expansion of government in Rhode Island.” As an example of something that had come about through voter initiative in Massachusetts, he pointed to Proposition 21/2, a cap on state tax increases.

House Speaker William J. Murphy, D-West Warwick, is one among many lawmakers who oppose voter initiative. Murphy has said it contradicts the concept of representative government, and that the process “can be easily manipulated by special-interest groups.”

speoples@projo.com / (401) 277-7459

egudrais@projo.com / (401) 277-7045