One by one, even the most culturally conservative states are succumbing to the demands of patients and mounting scientific evidence to pass laws to allow use\u00a0of (at least) extracts containing cannabinoids, or (at most) actual herbaceous marijuana for either medical or \u201crecreational\u201d purposes.<\/p>\n
The most recent domino to fall was Oklahoma. On June 26, voters in the Sooner State approved\u00a0Question No. 788<\/a>\u00a0by some 57 percent \u2014\u00a0legalizing<\/a>\u00a0the use, sale and cultivation of medical marijuana. Patients with a special license from a physician will be able to possess up to 8 ounces and grow up to 12 plants. While these limits are stricter than in many medical marijuana states, the law is more liberal than most in one important respect: it lists no specific ailments but leaves whether to recommend cannabis entirely up to the patient\u2019s doctor.<\/p>\n Following Oklahoma\u2019s medical marijuana vote, there is only one conservative state remaining \u2014 Idaho \u2014 that has not yet passed any legislation to legalize or decriminalize cannabis in any respect.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Marijuana Policy Project writes<\/a>\u00a0that Idaho \u201cis the only remaining state whose law does not acknowledge medical cannabis in any way.\u201d<\/p>\n One major opponent there has been Gov. Butch Otter.\u00a0In 2015, the Idaho legislature approved S1146, an extremely limited bill that would have protected some seriously ill patients from being convicted for possession of CBD extracts. Otter vetoed it.<\/p>\n A second such effort in the state house this year, HB 577, was squelched by Otter\u2019s supporters in the Senate following a closed-door discussion \u2014\u00a0sparking a controversy<\/a>\u00a0about a possible violation of the state\u2019s open meetings rule.<\/p>\n Under current law in Idaho, possession of up to an ounce of cannabis carries a penalty of one year in prison and a fine of up to $1,000.<\/p>\n However, Otter, a Republican, is not running for re-election. The Republican candidate, Brad Little, has an identically intolerant stance. But Democratic primary winner Paulette Jordan does support legalizing and regulating cannabis. And she may have a chance \u2014 polls are\u00a0predicting a tight race<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even though Idaho is technically the only state without a law pertaining to the medical cannabis on the books, that doesn\u2019t mean that access to medical marijuana is easy in all other 49 states.<\/p>\n According to the\u00a0National Conference of State Legislatures<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0NORML<\/a>, 31\u00a0states have full medical marijuana laws (joined by the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico) and another 15 states have limited laws that just allow the use of CBD products.\u00a0(The nine states that have legalized adult-use cannabis outright \u2014 Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, California, Massachusetts, Maine, Nevada and\u00a0Vermont<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 are included in the count of 31 states with full medical marijuana laws.)<\/p>\n So, if you add the 31 states with full medical marijuana and the 15 states with limited medical CBD laws, that leaves four states without real access to medical cannabis or CBD extracts: Kansas, South Dakota, Nebraska and Idaho.<\/p>\n However, Kansas, South Dakota and Nebraska all have extremely limited laws that do technically acknowledge some of the medical benefits of cannabis.<\/p>\n Kansas and South Dakota have recently reclassified CBD under state law, distinguishing it from marijuana and effectively making CBD an unregulated and legal substance. However, the South Dakota law,\u00a0passed in March 2017<\/a>, makes CBD sales contingent on approval by the federal Food & Drug Administration, which so far\u00a0has only approved the marijuana extract Epidiolex<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Kansas law,\u00a0passed in April<\/a>, followed a public outcry over a\u00a0local police raid<\/a>\u00a0on an alternative medicine shop in the town of Mission last year, in which CBD products were seized.\u00a0The products are now back on the shelf.<\/p>\n Nebraska may be in something of a gray area. Last September, the state Attorney General\u2019s office\u00a0issued a statement<\/span><\/a>\u00a0insisting that CBD remains illegal in the state. But CBD products apparently remain available at more than one Omaha outlet. And in 2015, the state legislature in Lincoln\u00a0passed a law<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that allowed for a CBD pilot program, whereby the University of Nebraska and Nebraska Medicine were allowed to grow hemp for CBD, make low-THC oil and administer it to patients suffering from seizures.<\/span><\/p>\n However, Idaho doesn\u2019t even have a cannabis law with a gray area worth debating, leaving the state out on its own as the only state in America without a medical cannabis law on the books.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>,\u00a0how much access to medical marijuana do you have in your state?<\/p>\n The post Only 1 State in the US Doesn\u2019t Have a Medical Marijuana Law: Idaho<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
One by one, even the most culturally conservative states are succumbing to the demands of patients and mounting scientific evidence to pass laws to allow use\u00a0of (at least) extracts containing cannabinoids, or (at most) actual herbaceous marijuana for either medical or \u201crecreational\u201d purposes. The most recent domino to fall wasContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[605,50,136,4844,4845,2752,3246,4846,292,139,56,1520,146,2554,81,1577],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566"}],"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\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27567,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566\/revisions\/27567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Idaho: Hope for Medical Cannabis After the 2018 Election<\/h4>\n
South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Idaho: Effectively Zero Access to Cannabis<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Only 1 State in the US Doesn\u2019t Have a Medical Marijuana Law: Idaho<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"