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The attorney general of Oklahoma says he would \u201clove\u201d to see the state\u2019s medical marijuana program wiped out, as the governor recently suggested<\/a>. But he cautioned that doing so would mean reimbursing the hundreds of licensees participating in the market because the state would be \u201ctaking\u201d a revenue source away from them.<\/p>\n During a press briefing on Tuesday,\u00a0Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (R) was asked about Gov. Kevin Stitt\u2019s (R) call to have voters revisit the state\u2019s medical marijuana program and ultimately \u201cshut it down.\u201d Drummond said it\u2019s a \u201ccomplicated issue.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNow, clearly, when we passed this law in 2018, we were asleep at the switch, right?\u201d he said. \u201cWe did not put proper protocol in place to limit the number of marijuana grow facilities. It was truly the Wild West.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to balance the investment in those legal operations with the desire by all law enforcement\u2014I think unanimity, that there\u2019s unanimity among law enforcement\u2014if we didn\u2019t have marijuana at all, it would be better for the state,\u201d the attorney general said. \u201cBut we have to be aware of, and if the governor goes forward with this plan or a future governor does, then we would need to reimburse these individuals, because it will effectively be a taking.\u201d<\/p>\n As a lawyer, Drummond said he\u2019s \u201cconcerned about the taking.\u201d But as a law enforcement representative, \u201cI\u2019d love for it to be gone,\u201d he said, adding that, at one of his first meetings with the FBI as the state\u2019s attorney general, he was advised to end the state\u2019s medical cannabis program to mitigate public safety concerns.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI will also add on that: It\u2019s an illusion to think that we\u2019re offsetting the tax dollars with the cost of law enforcement,\u201d he said. \u201cI could not even begin to estimate that numbers of hundreds of millions of dollars spent in law enforcement to eradicate black market\u2014marijuana, fentanyl production, sex trafficking, human trafficking\u2014and Oklahoma is probably 100-to-1 ratio. So this bargain for exchange, Oklahoma got the bad end of it.\u201d<\/p>\n The governor\u2019s push for a reevaluation of Oklahoma\u2019s medical marijuana law has drawn mixed reactions from top lawmakers and officials<\/a>.<\/p>\n Senate President Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton (R), for example, expressed openness to the idea\u2014though he made clear the will of voters must still be respected, so it\u2019s unlikely he would agree to an outright repeal of the legalization law.<\/p>\n There should, however, be an \u201cactual medical marijuana program,\u201d the Senate president said.<\/p>\n Senate Minority Leader Julia Kirt (D), for her part, said she\u2019s \u201cnot into revisiting state questions,\u201d and lawmakers should \u201ctrust the people, and we should actually implement them as well.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis legislature, before our time, could have made a decision to put guardrails in place before this state question passed,\u201d the senator said. \u201cInstead, they stuck their head in the sand and let that question pass and be mayhem.\u201d<\/p>\n Chris Anoatubby, the lieutenant governor of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma, aligned himself with Stitt\u2019s position, stating that the medical marijuana program as currently implemented has \u201cbeen a problem all over Oklahoma.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that he\u2019d \u201cabsolutely\u201d support \u201creforming\u201d the cannabis law.<\/p>\n During his speech on Monday, the governor complained that the state has \u201cmore dispensaries than we do pharmacies,\u201d adding that marijuana retailers \u201chide an industry that enables cartel activity, human trafficking, and foreign influence in our state.\u201d<\/p>\n While regulators and law enforcement have \u201cdone incredible work to hold back the tide of illegal activity,\u201d Stitt\u00a0said, the industry is \u201cplagued by foreign criminal interests and bad actors, making it nearly impossible to rein in.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t put a band-aid on a broken bone,\u201d he said. \u201cKnowing what we know, it\u2019s time to let Oklahomans bring safety and sanity back to their neighborhoods. Send the marijuana issue back to the vote of the people and shut it down.\u201d<\/p>\n While the governor\u2019s rhetoric signals he may be interested in seeing the medical cannabis industry shuttered altogether, it\u2019s not clear what exactly he wants voters to decide on and his office has not released specific language of a proposed ballot measure.<\/p>\n Back in 2022, Stitt similarly used his State of the State address as an opportunity to dig at the voter-approved medical marijuana law,\u00a0arguing that residents were misled by proponents of the ballot initiative<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in November,\u00a0Oklahoma activists withdrew an adult-use marijuana legalization initiative<\/a>\u00a0that they\u2019d hoped to place on the state\u2019s 2026 ballot.<\/p>\n After a short but aggressive signature push to secure ballot placement, Oklahomans for Responsible Cannabis Action (ORCA) ultimately did not turn in its petitions by the deadline, according to the secretary of state\u2019s office.<\/p>\n There were challenges unique to this election cycle, as last year the governor gave final approval to legislation that some advocates worry will inhibit future citizen-led policy changes, including cannabis reform.<\/p>\n The law puts\u00a0additional requirements on initiative \u201cgist\u201d language that voters see on the ballot<\/a>\u00a0and also revise policies around signature gathering to make it so petitioners could only submit signatures from up to 11.5 percent of registered voters in a single county for statutory proposals and 20.8 percent for constitutional measures.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, amid the signature gathering process, law enforcement leaders with the Oklahoma Association of Chiefs and Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs\u00a0had been raising concerns about cannabis<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014 Also in Oklahoma, lawmakers in March advanced a bill aimed at\u00a0protecting gun rights of state-registered medical marijuana patients<\/a>, although federal law still bars cannabis users from owning firearms regardless of their patient status.<\/p>\n Another state bill filed last year by a GOP legislator would criminalize the use of medical cannabis during pregnancy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Oklahoma Attorney General Warns That State Would Need To \u2018Reimburse\u2019 Medical Marijuana Businesses Under Governor\u2019s Plan To Shut Down Market<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The attorney general of Oklahoma says he would \u201clove\u201d to see the state\u2019s medical marijuana program wiped out, as the governor recently suggested. But he cautioned that doing so would mean reimbursing the hundreds of licensees participating in the market because the state would be \u201ctaking\u201d a revenue source awayContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":85333,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81,126],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85332"}],"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=85332"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85334,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85332\/revisions\/85334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Oklahoma Attorney General Warns That State Would Need To \u2018Reimburse\u2019 Medical Marijuana Businesses Under Governor\u2019s Plan To Shut Down Market<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"