Nebraska Advocacy Group is working on two medical cannabis petitions

Nebraska is currently working on petitions that could legalize medical cannabis.

After the failure of an initiative to legalize medical cannabis in Nebraska in 2020, proponents immediately set about developing two new initiatives for election year 2022.

Advocacy group Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana held a brief campaign update on Facebook on Aug. 4, calling on volunteers to put their time, money, or talent into the cause.

“We are about to have a petition and a language for submission. Our legal team has spent countless hours in this absolutely crucial process to ensure we fix any flaws in our language that the opposition may and likely will haunt, ”Crista, a nationwide campaign coordinator, said in the update.

For medical marijuana, according to the Lincoln Journal Star, Nebraskans will seek a sentence amendment to the state constitution that would be broader than their previous attempt. “Individuals in the state of Nebraska have the right to cannabis in all its forms for medical purposes,” the petition currently reads.

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Nebraska is hoping for better luck this year

In 2020, a court ruled that the Nebraskan medical marijuana single initiative violated the one-topic rule. “One-subject voting defines the general subject matter of a proposed electoral measure by its primary purpose. Without a unifying purpose, separate proposals in a vote are necessarily independent and distinct proposals that require a separate vote. ”Article III-2 of the Nebraska State Constitution.

At the end of the 2021 legislature, a medical cannabis bill, endorsed by Senator Anna Wishart, was also rejected. Wishart said she had help from the Marijuana Policy Project and the Nebraska ACLU to identify “any possible challenge” the petition might face.

Now, with the arrival of these two initiatives, Wishart and supporters alike are working together in hopes of avoiding problems with the one-topic rule while supporting two initiatives that “work in concert,” said Wishart.

The first is that lawmakers must protect doctors who recommend medicinal cannabis and patients from being convicted of possession or use. The second initiative draws attention to protecting companies that manufacture medical cannabis products. “I think we really heard what they said about our last initiative,” said Wishart. “That is why we are departing from the previous voting initiative that we submitted.”

The reason pressure on medical cannabis has been split into two different initiatives is because of a 2014 constitutional amendment on gambling. It was put down due to a rule that prevents multiple subjects from being mentioned in a single initiative. Instead, supporters drew up three separate petitions (Initiative 429, 430 and 431), each of which was accepted.

Wishart told the Lincoln Journal Star that they want to pursue the same strategy, but it won’t be an easy journey. “It is too risky not to err on the extremely safe side, even if it is more expensive,” she said. “There is no room for error.”

Nebraskan Medical Marijuana and Wishart hope to submit the language for their two initiatives by September 6, 2021. In the meantime, efforts are working to build a team of 125 volunteer signature collectors. In 2020 they collected 196,000 signatures for the individual initiative, of which 123,000 in June alone. “We have people who are not only more excited than before, but who have recruited a team of volunteers to help them,” added Wishart. “As long as the language is good, what we are currently working on, we will be successful.”

Wishart stated in a May press release that she is confident that they are on the right track this year. “That was true last year, and it is still true today that the vast majority of Nebraskans are on our side on this issue. Voters were wrongly denied the opportunity to reform last year, but this time we are ready for any legal challenge and will succeed. “