By COREY SHIRLEY, Student Reporter
Throughout this past year, hundreds of volunteers from all across Oklahoma worked tirelessly to gather enough signatures to place the legalization of medical marijuana, also known as State Question 788, on the ballot this November.
However, a procedural issue has put the brakes on this state initiative for this year.
According to the Oklahoma State Constitution, all ballot initiatives have to be reviewed by the Office of the Attorney General before being placed on the ballot. The Attorney General can re-write the ballot title if he or she believes that it doesn’t meet the proper standards.
And that is exactly what has happened with this ballot proposition.
According to a lawsuit recently filed with the Oklahoma Supreme Court “Attorney General Scott Pruitt {has} injected his own personal bias” against the medical marijuana initiative when he rewrote the ballot title.
The suit is requesting that the State’s highest court order that the original ballot title stand and be placed on the ballot.
As of now though, the State Supreme Court has not ruled on the case, and the deadline for an initiative to be placed on the ballot for this year has passed.
However, this state question could be voted on in November of 2018.
This is not the first time Attorney General Pruitt was criticized for revising ballot initiatives.
This summer, the State Supreme Court ruled that two different revisions for state questions dealing with criminal justice reform were “misleading and partial.”
The court had the ballot initiatives rewritten and placed back on the ballot for this November.
The medical marijuana initiative states that “a license is required for the use and possession of marijuana for medicinal purposes” and that “the license must be approved by an Oklahoma board certified physician.”
The lawsuit filed against the Attorney General’s rewrite tries to argue that the new title is “misleading and confusing {because} it states in its first two sentences that “this measure legalizes the licensed use, sale, and growth of marijuana in Oklahoma. There are no qualifying medical conditions identified.”
However, it is important to remember that this state question would only change state law, not federal law. So, even if the state question was passed, the possession, sale, and growth of marijuana would still be a federal crime. The federal authorities may choose, however, to not enforce the federal penalties, which is what they are now doing in Colorado.