Arkansas must count signatures for medical marijuana amendment
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
/2024/10/03/1727982208426.gif?w=3840)
Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Secretary of State John Thurston must continue verifying signatures to put an amendment loosening medical marijuana laws on the November ballot, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.
Why it matters: If Thurston had been allowed to throw out the 18,000 signatures in question, the amendment would not have a chance of having enough verified signatures and the votes for or against it wouldn't count.
- Without counting any of these signatures, 88,040 of the necessary 90,704 signatures have been verified.
Context: Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin had said Thurston couldn't count the signatures because they were collected by paid canvassers during the 30-day cure period, which gave the petitioners more time to collect signatures in August, the newspaper reported.
Zoom in: The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment of 2024 seeks to allow patients ages 21 and up to grow and process marijuana plants at home. It would also open up eligibility for any medical conditions that a healthcare practitioner considers debilitating instead of the existing qualifying conditions.
- The amendment also creates a trigger law so that if recreational marijuana becomes federally legal, existing dispensaries in Arkansas would be able to sell recreational marijuana. In that case, adults could legally possess up to one 1 ounce of marijuana.
What's next: Arkansans for Patient Access, the group behind the amendment, says it's confident it will have enough verified signatures for the votes to count.