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Advocates for marijuana reform endured a series of key losses during Tuesday\u2019s election<\/a>, with legalization proposals defeated in three states. But in Kentucky, voters in more than 100 counties and cities sent a different message, approving local ordinances to allow medical cannabis businesses to operate in their jurisdictions.<\/p>\n After Gov. Andy Beshear (D) signed a <\/a>medical marijuana legalization bill<\/a> into law last year, numerous cities and counties have taken up measures on whether to allow banning cannabis businesses in their jurisdictions.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, voters in another 53 counties and 53 cities got the chance to make that decision\u2014and all 106 measures<\/a> passed<\/a>, in red and blue jurisdictions alike with more than 340,000 votes total in favor as of Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that the marijuana went undefeated 106 to zero in every region of Kentucky in deep red Trump counties shows just how powerful this issue is across the board,\u201d Jim Higdon, co-founder of the Kentucky-based company Cornbread Hemp, told Marijuana Moment.<\/p>\n The latest ordinances add to the more than 40 cities that already approved allowing marijuana businesses. Only 20 have passed resolutions to ban the cannabis industry from working in their area, Kentucky Public Radio reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n With the medical marijuana law set to take effect in January, regulators with the Office of Medical Cannabis (OCM) have been holding lotteries in recent weeks for cannabis business applicants seeking to enter the industry. So far, they\u2019ve approved several cultivators, processors and testing facilities<\/a>. A dispensary application lottery will take place on December 16.<\/p>\n The governor separately signed a bill earlier this year that moved the medical cannabis licensing timetable ahead six months to allow the market to launch earlier.<\/p>\n Regulators received about 5,000 applications for medical marijuana business licenses<\/a> since opening up a two-month window that ended last month.<\/p>\n All told, Kentucky took in nearly $28 million in non-refundable application fees during that two-month period. With about 4,000 applications submitted for dispensary licenses\u2014and just 48 that will be selected statewide\u2014that means each applicant has about a 1 percent chance of being awarded the license.<\/p>\n The governor also recently said that once the cannabis program is up and running, he intends to rescind an executive order he issued last October to\u00a0legally protect patients who possess medical cannabis purchased at out-of-state licensed retailers<\/a>.<\/p>\n In June, the governor also announced that the state Board of Medical Licensure and Board of Nursing would simultaneously start issuing\u00a0permits for doctors and nurses to issue medical cannabis recommendations<\/a>\u00a0to patients beginning in July.<\/p>\n Beshear separately participated in a\u00a0historic roundtable discussion at the White House in March alongside Vice President Kamala Harris<\/a>\u00a0and pardon recipients who received clemency under President Joe Biden\u2019s pardon proclamations.<\/p>\n After Biden issued his first pardon proclamation in October 2022, Beshear said he was\u00a0\u201cactively considering\u201d possible marijuana clemency actions<\/a>\u00a0the state could take and encouraged people to petition for relief in the interim. In 2021, he also talked about his desire to\u00a0let Kentucky farmers grow and sell recreational cannabis across state lines<\/a>.<\/p>\n In July, Beshear filed a federal comment in\u00a0support of the Biden administration\u2019s marijuana rescheduling proposal<\/a>, saying the reform will have \u201csubstantial and meaningful impacts\u201d on patients, communities, businesses and research.<\/p>\n The governor has separately urged lawmakers to expand the medical marijuana program, announcing in January that two independent advisory groups he appointed\u00a0unanimously voted to recommend the addition of more than a dozen new conditions to qualify patients<\/a>\u00a0for medical cannabis.<\/p>\n \u2014 Meanwhile,\u00a0the state legislature delivered a budget bill to the governor last year<\/a>\u00a0that includes a provision restricting funding for the medical cannabis regulatory body overseeing the state program until its advisory board determines there\u2019s a \u201cpropensity\u201d of research supporting the therapeutic \u201cefficacy\u201d of cannabis.<\/p>\n This January, Kentucky lawmakers\u00a0filed marijuana legislation with a notable bill number: HB 420<\/a>. If passed, it would have legalized and regulated cannabis for adults 21 and older, though it did not advance in the state\u2019s Republican-controlled legislature this session.<\/p>\n A more limited legalization measure,\u00a0HB 72, was introduced earlier that month by Rep. Nima Kulkarni (D). It would\u00a0end all penalties for simple possession and use of marijuana by adults 21 and older<\/a>\u00a0and also allow adults to grow a small number of cannabis plants at home. Commercial sales, however, would remain prohibited. It too died, however.<\/p>\n Last year, Kulkarni\u00a0introduced a measure that would have\u00a0let voters decide whether to legalize use, possession and home cultivation<\/a>. The lawmaker previously introduced a\u00a0similar noncommercial legalization proposal<\/a>\u00a0for the 2022 legislative session.<\/p>\n What Donald Trump\u2019s Presidential Election Means For Marijuana Reform<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Photo courtesy of WeedPornDaily<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Medical Marijuana Was On The Ballot In Over 100 Kentucky Cities And Counties. It Passed In Every Single Place<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Advocates for marijuana reform endured a series of key losses during Tuesday\u2019s election, with legalization proposals defeated in three states. But in Kentucky, voters in more than 100 counties and cities sent a different message, approving local ordinances to allow medical cannabis businesses to operate in their jurisdictions. After Gov.Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":78858,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78857"}],"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\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78859,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78857\/revisions\/78859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Medical Marijuana Was On The Ballot In Over 100 Kentucky Cities And Counties. It Passed In Every Single Place<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"