The 2012 voter referendum on medical marijuana/cannabis in Arkansas failed by only a couple of percentage points, a vote found surprising in a red state. Four years later with medical marijuana approved in half of the states in the U.S., many thought it would be a slam-dunk to get it approved in Arkansas in 2016. But now there is more doubt in the picture due to the likelihood to two voter referendums on the issue on the ballot Nov. 8, which could be confusing for voters and split support for medicinal marijuana.
Having two referendums, Issue Six and Issue Seven on the ballot, could mean that neither will get the 50 percent vote needed to pass. If both pass, the one with the most votes will become law.
Two leaders of the efforts to put medicinal marijuana/cannabis on the ballot this year split primarily on the issue of whether patients will be allowed to grow their own marijuana. Arkansas for Compassionate Care campaign director Melissa Fults said the “grow your own” provisions in the 2016 Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act are necessary to make sure that patients don’t get fleeced by companies more interested in profits than in providing “Natural Medicine for the Natural State.” She said the grow-your-own provision is designed to provide access to patients too far away from a care center to get their medicine without undue burden. The Medical Cannabis Act, Issue Seven on the ballot, would allow patients who live at least 20 miles from a dispensary to grow up to five plants.
David Couch, an attorney in Little Rock who has headed up efforts by the group Arkansans United for Medical Marijuana to get the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment to the Arkansas Constitution on the ballot, said Arkansas is too conservative a state to approve the grow-your-own provision. The battle between the two versions has been nasty with Couch’s campaign spending $30,000 to review the signature collection efforts for the Medical Cannabis Act.
“He paid $700,000 to get his signatures,” Fults said. “Where did he get all the money? He got it from the Bevans Family Trust, which owns a liquor store in Maumelle and from a payday loan company that found a loophole to be in business in Arkansas. The way their amendment is designed, only a few people will be licensed to grow it, they will set the price, and the patients will not be protected. There is no maximum for what patients would have to pay for their medicine.”
Fults said the Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act requires the marijuana/cannabis care centers to put one percent of their gross sales into a pool to allow low-income people to get medicine.
“His has no provisions to protect the patients like that,” Fults said. “He made a maximum for what can be charged for a license for a dispensary or cultivation center, but does not have provisions on the maximum that can be charged patients. This is supposed to be about patients, about medicine and about sick and dying people, not about how much money you can make. Ours is designed for care center owners to make a decent living and the way it is set up they will have to keep their prices reasonable or their patients could sign to be with another dispensary. With his, there would be no limit as to how much profit a cultivation center or dispensary could make. There would be no protections for the patients on cost.”
Couch said allegations of excess profit-making with the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment don’t hold water because it doesn’t allow a monopoly on dispensaries or growing facilities and there would be competition in the marketplace.
“The proposed amendment sets up between twenty and forty dispensaries,” Couch said. “No person can own more than one dispensary. The applicant for the license has to be from Arkansas and sixty percent of the ownership interests of that dispensary have to be from Arkansas. There are up to eight cultivation facilities and you can’t own more than one.”
Couch said that while the Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act provides that dispensaries be non-profit, that is no assurance.
“My real job in Arkansas is representing people harmed in nursing homes,” Couch said. “Many are set up as non-profits. Then they set up management corporations that take all the profits. So just because it is non-profit doesn’t mean for-profit companies won’t come in and take profits. She says my measure would create a monopoly, but hers could easily be a monopoly. Our measure gives people a medical marijuana card and they can purchase at any dispensary in the state. With hers, patients can only buy at one dispensary. There is no competitive environment that encourages anything to keep prices down. This is ripe for exploiting patients.”
Couch said the national funders that backed Fults’s group, primarily because of the
“grow-your-own” provision, contacted his group in late March and early April and asked them to stand down and not turn in their petition signatures. Couch said he witnessed irregularities in the competing group’s collection of signatures such as leaving petitions unattended on counters at businesses for people to sign, not having proper training and criminal background checks for paid canvassers, and not having paid canvassers registered with the Secretary of State prior to collecting signatures.
“I tried to tell Melissa’s funders and Melissa there were significant problems with signature collection, offered to look at her files and try to get them in order,” Couch said. “They didn’t listen to me and instead started spreading rumors that our effort is all about money and other activities to thwart collection efforts.”
Couch said two issues on the ballot would confuse people, and he didn’t want both of them to fail. He said that is particularly important because there is more organized and well-funded opposition to medical marijuana/cannabis this time around.
Couch said their investigation showed 15,000 signatures for the medicinal cannabis petition had been collected in violation of statute.
“If a challenge had been filed to her measure, it was clear to me that it would be taken off the ballot,” he said. “They wanted us to stand down. We said we aren’t going to stand down because if this challenge is filed, you will be taken off the ballot. I thought at the time if we showed her, in black and white, these signatures are incorrect that she would help support us. But apparently I was wrong. I still think Medical Cannabis Act will come off the ballot. If that happens, you wouldn’t be able to vote on medical Arkansas at all.”
Retired Judge John Robbins, appointed by the Arkansas Supreme Court as a Special Master to evaluate the challenge to the Medical Cannabis Act, found that sufficient signatures were gathered to put the issue on the ballot.
“We still have to wait for the Supreme Court’s decision, but it is very rare for the Supreme Court to rule against the Special Master’s decision,” Fults said. “Interestingly enough, the other two initiatives that had signatures gathered by the same group as Mr. Couch’s are in serious trouble and very possibly going to be off the ballot because of serious mistakes on their part to gather signatures properly.”
Couch also said that Arkansas for Compassionate Care has been financially supported by national groups that have an agenda of legalizing marijuana. And he said while many Arkansans support medical marijuana, they don’t want it legalized.
Fults recommends that voters read both competing versions and make their own decisions. She feels there is high probability that voters will approve medical cannabis this go-around.
“In 2012, it almost passed,” Fults said. “The difference in the two times is unbelievable because now so many more people are more educated. They realize it truly is a medicine that is tremendously helpful for some types of illnesses. I think it will be a completely different result than it was in 2012.”
Fults said it also helps that half the states have medical cannabis now, “and the world hasn’t fallen off its axis. The world hasn’t caved in. No horrible things that have happened. It is medical cannabis. It is medicine.”
Fults said many of the supporters of the Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act are older people.
“We’re not spring chickens,” Fults said. “We have too many people we know in our age group who absolutely have qualifying conditions for which the use of cannabis could improve the quality of their lives drastically.”