By Tom Angell
Arkansas officials certified two separate medical marijuana initiatives for the state’s November ballot on Friday.
The secretary of state’s office has not yet made an official announcement, and a spokesman did not respond to a request for comment, but Ryan Denham, deputy campaign director for one of the medical cannabis efforts, shared the news with Marijuana.com.
Denham’s measure, the Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act, officially qualified last month and was just assigned the ballot number of Issue 7.
Advocates supporting an additional measure, the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment, turned in a batch of signatures last month that fell short of the required threshold. But they turned in additional signatures last week which would likely have put the effort over the top.
However, state officials ran out of time to verify all the signatures before they needed to finalize and start printing ballots and related materials, so they decided to certify the measure in any case. They will keep counting and if it is determined that organizers did not in fact collect enough signatures, the votes for the measure won’t end up being reported.
A group of medical cannabis opponents filed a lawsuit this week asking the state Supreme Court to stop the state from counting or certifying the results of the measures after they are voted on in November. Advocates have asked the court to dismiss the case.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a former head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, has also spoken out against the proposals.
In addition to countering claims from medical marijuana opponents, advocates are faced with clearing up confusion that could arise from two similar but separate measures dealing with a single topic appearing on the same ballot.
They are worried that if all medical cannabis supporters don’t end up voting for both measures and instead pick only the one they prefer, the votes could be split and a majority won’t be achieved for either initiative.
There is also uncertainty about what would happen if both measures are approved by voters on Election Day.
