Our View

Our View

Pair of marijuana legalization bids not a joint e_ort

Well, good Citizen Voters in Arkansas, it now appears at least one of two proposed initiated acts to legalize medical marijuana will appear on the upcoming November ballot, based on news from the secretary of state’s office the other day.

We’re told it did meet the signature threshold and is the first initiated proposal to clear that hurdle. The Arkansas for Compassionate Care, led by organizer Melissa Fults, submitted petitions bearing about 117,000 signatures. The “pot” smoking group needed 67,887 valid signatures from a variety of counties. We’re told 77,516 signatures were deemed valid, giving it enough to appear before voters to decide its fate in November.

While Fults and her followers have succeeded in getting their proposed initiated act before voters they have an uphill battle to fight on different fronts. On Fults’ heels is David Couch, a Little Rock lawyer, who says he has also submitted signed petitions on his Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment.

Fults says she fears that if both proposals appear on the ballot, both will fail.

Then there is Jerry Cox, executive director of the Arkansas Family Council Action Committee, who has vowed to strongly oppose both medical-marijuana measures and is even threatening a legal challenge.

Even Gov. Asa Hutchinson has come out in opposition to both these marijuana initiatives saying, “I believe that while we want to provide medicine to anyone who needs it, this causes more problems that it solves.”

As we should all know, Hutchinson is a former director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. attorney and federal homeland security undersecretary, which, in our opinion gives him strong credibility in his views on this matter.

The governor is wise to recruit the medical community as a means of education Arkansans as to the negative impact this will have, and he has even asked the state’s surgeon general (Greg Bledsoe) to be a lead spokesperson in reference to those initiatives and articulate any concerns that he has from a physician standpoint.

The argument we have on this issue is that marijuana is not medicine, but that point will certainly be argued.

Make no mistake, both these organized groups have their supporters, raised a considerable amount of money and continue to accept donations to make sure that their message gets out. Currently, these two organizers are butting heads with Fults calling on Couch to end his campaign and simply team up with her and her cause.

The funny aspect of this is that Couch worked with Fults on a proposed 2012 medical-marijuana measure that fell just short of approval by voters. After the election though, the two split over a “grow-your-own” provision, and they pursued separate proposals for this election year.

It is under Fults’ proposal, a person with a “Hardship Cultivation Certificate” provided by the Arkansas Department of Health would be allowed to grow up to 10 cannabis plants.

We have to make it clear that Arkansas is simply not capable of adequately overseeing this “grow-your-own” concept, which in our opinion, will result in total abuse and misuse.

And, let’s not fail to mention how this will create a lucrative opportunity for well-organized marijuana peddlers to control the “pot” trade in Arkansas. We know very good and well that this state’s health department is incapable of policing this aspect of “pot” dealing.

Nevertheless, and unfortunately, if Arkansas voters fall for these initiatives, authorities must be prepared to deal with them.