Arkansas Cannabis Advocates Submit 111,400+ Signatures to Expand Medical Program

Arkansas canvassers hoping to expand the state’s medical cannabis program and provide a pathway for adult-use legalization turned in 111,402 signatures July 5 to place a proposed constitutional amendment on the November 2024 ballot.

The proposed measure, the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment of 2024, is sponsored by Arkansans for Patient Access. It aims to build upon the state’s medical cannabis legalization measure from 2016 (Amendment 98), which voters passed with a 53.1% majority, according to the Arkansas Secretary of State.

The measure would expand health care provider eligibility to recommend medical cannabis, expand qualifying conditions, allow home cultivation, reduce medical cannabis card renewal burdens and update industry regulations, among other provisions (see bullet points below).

In addition, should the federal government deschedule cannabis, it would activate a provision in the Arkansas amendment to legalize adult-use cannabis at the state level.

The 2024 amendment needs at least 90,704 valid signatures—including minimums in at least 50 of 75 counties based on total votes cast in the state’s most recent governor’s race—to qualify for the 2024 ballot, according to the Secretary of State. However, the amendment’s sponsor has a 30-day grace period to submit additional signatures if 75% of the required signatures were validated in the initial submission (both statewide and for the 50-county threshold).

In other words, at least 68,028 signatures (75% of 90,704) turned in on July 5 by Arkansans for Patient Access must be verified as registered voters for the sponsor to be eligible to submit additional signatures. Therefore, canvassers are actively collecting additional signatures while the Secretary of State’s office works to validate the ones initially submitted, a process that can take up to 30 days, according to the office.

“Our canvassers found voters eager to place an amendment on the ballot that will eliminate barriers to access and make it less expensive to acquire and keep a medical marijuana card,” Bill Paschall, a petition representative for Arkansans for Patient Access, said in a statement, The Associated Press reported.

Paschall is also the managing director for the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association, an industry trade group.

Among numerous provisions, the 2024 initiative would amend the state constitution to:

• Allow medical cannabis patients and caregivers 21 and older in Arkansas to grow up to 14 plants (seven mature) at home for personal use;
• Allow all health care practitioners, including osteopathic doctors, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and pharmacists, to certify patients;
• Allow health care practitioners to recommend medical cannabis to patients for any debilitating condition rather than limiting patients to 18 qualifying conditions;
• Allow patients to receive telemedicine assessments for their medical cannabis recommendations, removing a physician-patient relationship requirement;
• Allow reciprocity for non-Arkansas residents to apply for and receive registry identification cards in the same way as Arkansas residents for the state’s medical cannabis program;
• Extend the expiration date for registry identification cards from one to three years and eliminate card application fees;
• Remove and replace advertising restrictions with restrictions for dispensaries, processors, and cultivation facilities narrowly tailored to prevent advertising and packaging from appealing to children;
• Require the Alcoholic Beverage Control Division to make rules that require packaging that cannot be opened by a child or that prevents “ready access to toxic or harmful amounts” of the product;
• Define “usable marijuana” as cannabis and other substances, including all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa, whether growing or not, including any seeds, resin, compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, isomer or preparation of the plant, including THC and all other derivatives, and to exclude hemp with a delta-9 THC concentration of not more than 0.3% on a dry-weight basis; and
• Allow cultivation facilities to sell cannabis in any form to dispensaries, processors or other cultivation facilities.
  

In addition, the proposed amendment would allow adults 21 and older to possess up to 1 ounce of cannabis flower and licensed cultivation and retail facilities to grow and sell adult-use cannabis should federal law prohibiting those activities change.

Arkansas voters rejected an adult-use cannabis legalization ballot measure in the 2022 election, with 56% casting ballots in opposition to the reform effort.

Under Arkansas’ current medical cannabis program, there are nearly 104,000 active patient cards, or roughly 1 per 29 residents (3.5% of the state’s population), as of July 6, according to the state’s Department of Health. The most prevalent qualifying condition among medical cannabis patients in fiscal 2023 was post-traumatic stress disorder, with 34.2% of qualifying patients listing this condition, according to the department.

Since the state launched medical cannabis sales in May 2019, licensed dispensaries have sold more than $1.2 billion in cannabis, Scott Hardin, communications director with the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, told Cannabis Business Times.

Arkansas dispensaries sold a record $283 million of cannabis in 2023 and $135.5 million through the first six months of 2024—down $5.5 million compared to the first six months of 2023—Hardin said.