As it does seemingly everywhere else in America, medical marijuana enjoys broad support in Utah \u2014 deep-red Utah, conservative Utah. Here in Utah, where U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, unapologetic Trump supporter, thinks medical marijuana is a good thing and once laced a statement with weed references, 76 percent of the same voters who haven\u2019t sent a Democrat to Congress since 1997 say they\u2019d support a ballot initiative to legalize cannabis for medical purposes.<\/p>\n
Luckily for them, they may have the chance to vote on just that this fall, but they also might not. Yes, that\u2019s vague, and it\u2019s confusing. As is the situation unfolding in Utah, where both the campaign to put medical marijuana on the ballot and a competing campaign to keep medical marijuana off of the ballot \u2014 not to defeat medical cannabis on its merits, but to deny voters the choice at all \u2014 have spent the last few weeks accusing each other of dirty tricks<\/a>.<\/p>\n Let us try to explain. The Utah Patients Coalition submitted 200,000 signatures from registered voters ahead of an April 16 deadline.<\/a> Only 113,134 need to be verified valid for Utah\u2019s medical marijuana initiative to appear on the November 2018 ballot \u2014 and so, tentatively at least, the signature campaign has won. The initiative has qualified. All that\u2019s left is convincing voters to vote for it.orrin<\/p>\n Or so you\u2019d think, but you would be wrong! In Utah, voters have until May 14 to change their minds and ask the county clerk to remove their names from the petition. And that\u2019s exactly what Drug Safe Utah is trying to do.<\/p>\n An effort of the Utah Medical Association, a group representing doctors, some familiar nationwide anti-cannabis zealots and, it would appear, a Drug Enforcement Administration Task Force<\/a>, Drug Safe Utah has hired counter-canvassers to go door-to-door to coax at least some of those same 76 percent of pro-cannabis voters to have second thoughts.<\/p>\n Their main arguments, other than weed is bad and that medical cannabis will \u201copen the door\u201d to recreational marijuana (both a hard arguments to make, considering the Utah medical-marijuana measure prohibits smoking and severely limits who can access cannabis, though it does allow for home grow) is that the measure\u2019s supposed supporters have no idea what\u2019s in the petition they signed.<\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t know what\u2019s in it,\u201d said Gayle Ruzicka, a cannabis opponent and local political activist, in comments to the Salt Lake Tribune. \u201cPeople need to know what they\u2019re signing and what they\u2019re voting for.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou are dumb and don\u2019t know what you did\u201d seems like a difficult sell anywhere, particularly in a place where a relatively simple proposition has such strong support. But if not a good case to make, Drug Safe Utah has resources to make it. The campaign is supposedly paying canvassers $25 an hour to go door-to-door to cast doubt on the proceedings \u2014 and there\u2019s at least some institutional support.<\/p>\n The Mormon church, a potent political force in Utah, where almost 61 percent of citizens are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, hasn\u2019t outright endorsed the opposition measure (which is a smart thing for a tax-exempt religious organization to do) but has praised its arguments.<\/p>\n Tensions ratcheted up this week, as both campaigns officially accused the other of deception and bad-faith efforts. On Wednesday, the Utah Patients Coalition released video of what it says is a Drug Safe Utah canvasser. The canvasser claims that the medical-marijuana supporters forged signatures to put the initiative on the ballot \u2014 an accusation they flatly deny.<\/p>\n For their part, on Wednesday, Drug Safe Utah also officially accused the Utah Patient Coalition of attempting to pay their canvassers to turn over what signature forms they\u2019d gathered. The complaint, filed with the state Attorney General\u2019s office, was in turn blasted as \u201cfraudulent lies.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n What does it all mean? Who to believe? Keep in mind what\u2019s at stake here \u2013 merely the chance to allow Utah voters, more than three-fourths of whom say they approve of medical marijuana, to have their say on the ballot.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you support cannabis for medical use?<\/p>\n The post Deception, Lies & Accusations Fly in Bizarre Utah Medical Marijuana Battle<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
As it does seemingly everywhere else in America, medical marijuana enjoys broad support in Utah \u2014 deep-red Utah, conservative Utah. Here in Utah, where U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, unapologetic Trump supporter, thinks medical marijuana is a good thing and once laced a statement with weed references, 76 percent of theContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,4216,53,139,4217,4218,424,4219,1133],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26108,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26107\/revisions\/26108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Deception, Lies & Accusations Fly in Bizarre Utah Medical Marijuana Battle<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"