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Legalized Cannabis Petitions In Ohio And Idaho Inch Closer To Recognition

All strains / Cannabis / How to choose / October 17, 2021

This week, Ohio cannabis activists made headway with a petition that would allow legal use of cannabis for residents 21 and over. This revised draft of a previously denied petition was approved by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s office.

A statement released by the AG’s office asserted that the prior draft was denied because it did not meet the standard of “a fair and truthful statement of the proposed law or constitutional amendment.”

After reworking their request, activists resubmitted their petition to Yost’s office. The AG accepted the revised draft, and released a statement that “The revised petition does meet that requirement and a certification has been submitted to the Ohio Secretary of State”

The petition seeks to enable adults age 21 and over to engage in recreational cannabis consumption. Additionally, the petition would alter the Ohio Revised Code to regulate the commercial and home cultivation of cannabis, as well as processing, sale, purchase, and possession of the plant and its derivatives.

Moving forward, the petition will have to be certified or denied by the Ohio Ballot Board. If the Board votes in the affirmative, petitioners will proceed to collect signatures from voters. A number of signatures “at least 3% of the vote cast in the last gubernatorial election” will need to be collected to move to the next hurdle in the legislative process. Furthermore, those signatures must be collected in 44 of the state’s 88 counties with a number “equal at least 1.5% of the vote cast in the last gubernatorial election.”

If petitioners are successful in their signature collecting efforts, AG Yost’s office will verify the signatures, and send the proposed measure to the state’s General Assembly, which will then undergo a referendum.

The General Assembly may then take one of four courses of action. The body may pass the law as-is, pass the law in an amended form, not pass the law, or not take action over the following four months. In any of the latter three scenarios, the petitioners will need to continue their work to get the law as they see it passed in the next general election.

Idaho’s Catches a Break

As Idaho lawmakers press for more restrictive petitioning laws, marijuana activists have found their efforts towards legalization to be met with significant opposition. Fortunately, that pressure has been relieved to some extent in the wake of a recent state Supreme Court decision.

The Court found that the petitioning process for new ballot initiatives had been so obstructive it entered into the territory of unconstitutionality. The ruling did not come as a result of this specific cannabis petition, but rather a case brought by the group Reclaim Idaho. The group had its own proposed initiative on education funding.

In its unanimous decision, the state Supreme Court found that the law, which took effect on July 1, unconstitutionally infringed on residents’ right to petition.

For some background, Idaho Governor Brad Little signed a bill, SB1110, in April that would require petitioners to gather signatures from six percent of voters across all of Idaho’s 35 districts. That’s nearly double the number of districts required before the signing of the April bill. The signature percentage from registered voters is double that required in Ohio, as detailed above. Both these conditions would need to be satisfied for a petition to qualify for a ballot initiative.

The campaign in question, called the Personal Adult Marijuana Decriminalization Act (PAMDA) would have been unlikely to make it before voters in 2022 without the court ruling.

Russ Belville, a spokesperson for Legalize the Idaho Way, Inc. and chief petitioner of PAMDA, told Marijuana Moment, a publication dedicated to covering the progress towards legislative marijuana reform, “We are excited that the Idaho Supreme Court recognized that SB1110 was an obviously unconstitutional attempt to kill petitioning rights. With this ruling, we are now able to move forward with our PAMDA initiative to decriminalize marijuana purchased legally out of state while we continue to support the IMMA medical initiative.”

As a result of the decision, petitioners will have until May 1, 2022, to gather the requisite 65,000 signatures and qualify for the ballot.

Among the proposed changes to cannabis law in Idaho, adults 21 years of age and older would be permitted to possess up to three ounces on private property. However, personal cultivation would be prohibited and no framework for legalized, regulated, and licensed cannabis retailers would be erected under the proposed ballot initiative. While that may sound counterintuitive, the petition affords these adults the freedom to travel out of state to make their cannabis purchase in another legalized state, then return with their legally purchased cannabis for personal consumption at a private location.

 

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