Lawmakers In Maine, Massachusetts, and Arkansas Are Seeking To Delay Or Prevent The Implementation Of Marijuana Legislation

Marijuana Legalization Could Be Delayed in Three States

This November, Voters in eight states approved legislation to legalize marijuana for medical or recreational purposes. Now, lawmakers in Maine, Massachusetts, and Arkansas are seeking to delay or prevent the implementation of marijuana legislation , according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

What is Happening To Legalization Measures In Each State?

 Massachusetts
The day after voters approved Massachusetts’ recreational marijuana measure, Treasurer Deborah Goldberg called on lawmakers to make a series of amendments to the new law-  from the the Boston Globe . She asked for an indefinite extension on the deadline for retail store licenses, which was set for January 2018, an increase on the 3.75 percent marijuana sales tax, and the removal of a provision allowing adults to grow up to six plants.

Massachusetts Senate President Stanley Rosenberg uses the rationale that voters didnt understand what they were voting for “I believe that when voters vote on most ballot questions, they are voting in principle,” he told the Globe. “They are not voting on the fine detail that is contained within the proposal.”

In Arkansas, where voters approved a medical marijuana system on Election Day, Gov. Asa Hutchinson, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration from 2001 to 2003, stated:

“It’s an example of the states innovating in a risky area, and certainly the states are leading on this, but we’re to a point that the federal government is going to have to readdress this,” Hutchinson told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “This does not call for a state-by-state solution, it calls for a national solution.”

What would happen if these lawmakers successfully delay the voter-approved legalization measures?

“My chief concern is that these retail markets are contingent on the state issuing licenses for entities to cultivate and dispense cannabis — acts that are in violation of federal law,” Paul Armentano, the deputy director of NORML,  “The Obama administration made clear in 2013 that it did not intend to interfere with these activities — thus giving local regulators the security to move forward,” Armentano said. “But absent such assurances from the incoming administration, it is possible that local lawmakers will simply refuse to issue the licenses necessary to implement the above-ground market place that voters have demanded. If there is such an impasse it would be one that lawmakers hostile to these policies would no doubt welcome and use to their advantage to thwart the will of the voters.”

“Voters spoke clearly on election day,” Armentano added. “They believe that cannabis should be legal and that its sale ought to be regulated accordingly. Politicians should respect these outcomes, not try to ignore them or undermine them.”