Deep-Red Arkansas Could Legalize Medical Marijuana This Fall

Few states are as solidly Republican as Arkansas. Yet, come the November ballot, two measures will appear before Arkansans voters to legalize medical usage of the plant.

“If a red conservative state like Arkansas in the Bible Belt can pass medical cannabis, then anybody can,” Melissa Fults, lead campaigner for one of the marijuana ballot measures told the Associated Press. “People are depending on us. We can’t let them down.”

November is “going to be a little tougher battle, but I think everyone’s views on medical marijuana are like their views on gay marriage,” David Couch, sponsor of a competing marijuana measure, said. “They’ve softened over the past couple years.”

Arkansas saw a measure to legalize medicinal marijuana in 2012, but it narrowly failed.

“At some point, there’s going to have to be change on the federal level to ensure that federal law and state law work together,” Tamar Todd, director of legal affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, said. “Certainly adding Southern states and Southern constituencies to the push to change laws at the federal level will be very significant.”

But Arkansas’s Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, is pushing back against marijuana legalization.

“We all want those who are ill or suffering to have the right kind of medicine, but there is a reason we have an [Food and Drug Administration] approval process for new medicines,” Hutchinson wrote in a statement, notes the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “We don’t vote on cancer cures, and we should not set a new pattern for determining what is good medicine at the ballot box.”

On September 12, Hutchinson took to the state capitol to address the press.

“Those who stand with me today are in the medical profession because they care and they want the best for their patients,” Hutchinson said, joined by state Surgeon General Dr. Greg Bledsoe, state Department of Health Director Dr. Nate Smith and other medical professionals. “If there is new medicine or a new product to alleviate suffering, they want it available.”

Sources: Associated Press via Los Angeles Times, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette / Photo Credit: David Brooks via Streetmaps.us