Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana will again seek to put the issue before voters

With a bill to legalize cannabis for medical use in Nebraska stuck in committee, medical marijuana advocates will try to put the issue before voters for the third straight election cycle.

Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana plans to file two initiatives with the Secretary of State’s office on Thursday with the goal of qualifying the measure for the November 2024 general election ballot.

Crista Eggers, the statewide campaign coordinator for Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana, earlier told state senators on the Judiciary Committee that if the Legislature failed to take action that parents like her would.

“For 10 years this has been talked about and advocated for by patients and caregivers like myself,” said Eggers, whose son, Colton, has intractable seizures. “I would have hoped our legislative body had decided it was important enough, but unfortunately that has not happened.”

Two separate petitions have identical language to a pair of measures that were circulated in 2022. Both seek to force the Legislature to change state statute and legalize cannabis for medical use instead of amend the state constitution.

The first petition will enact a new state statute protecting doctors who recommend cannabis and patients who use it for medical reasons, and the second requires the Legislature to legalize the production, supply, and distribution of cannabis for medical purposes.

“We know the people support this,” Eggers said. “We are going to execute and put that into motion to have safe and regulated medical cannabis in Nebraska.”

Once the petition language has been accepted by Secretary of State Bob Evnen, Eggers said Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana are planning to launch their campaign in June, with the goal of exceeding the signature-gathering requirements outlined in state law.

Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana will need to submit a number of signatures equal to 7% of registered voters in the state, including 5% of voters in 38 of Nebraska’s 93 counties.

The renewed effort comes after the two petitions fell about 9,000 signatures short of qualifying for the November 2022 general election ballot, and after the state Supreme Court found a 2020 ballot violated the single-subject rule for ballot initiatives after nearly 200,000 signatures were submitted.

The decision to pursue a ballot initiative also comes as the Legislature once again failed to act on Lincoln Sen. Anna Wishart’s attempt (LB588) to pass a medical marijuana law in Nebraska.

Wishart’s bill, which was heard by the Judiciary Committee in February, outlined a narrow list of qualifying medical conditions for which patients could seek medical marijuana, and also detailed the steps physicians must perform before they can recommend cannabis to a patient.

Patients recommended cannabis were allowed to purchase and possess up to 2.5 ounces or 2,000 milligrams of tetrahydrocannabinol – better known as THC – from state-licensed dispensaries, which were required to contract with licensed pharmacists trained in medical cannabis.

LB588 would have also prohibited patients from smoking or vaping cannabis, cultivating their own marijuana plants, operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of cannabis, or from using cannabis while riding as a passenger.

The bill, which Wishart said would have been one of the most conservative medical marijuana laws in the country, was the result of agreements between doctors, pharmacists and state senators who voiced concern about past efforts they found too broad.

But even after emotional testimony from a handful of parents of the roughly 19,600 Nebraska children who live with severe epilepsy and other individuals who described living with chronic pain, Wishart’s bill remained stuck in committee.

Wishart said turnover in the Legislature and on the Judiciary Committee resulted in a membership that did not follow the actions of past committees which had advanced medical marijuana legislation to the floor for debate.

Attorney General Mike Hilgers, who opposed medical marijuana when he was a state senator, and Nebraska’s chief medical officer also added to the opposition at the committee hearing earlier this year.

Wrestling with how to proceed, Wishart tried to narrow the bill further than it had already been narrowed, eventually landing on a “right to try” proposal for parents of children with severe epilepsy only.

That proposal would not have allowed for dispensaries to open in Nebraska – “there would have been no industry here,” Wishart said – but would have allowed those patients, at the recommendation of their doctor, to travel to other states to buy cannabis.

It also would have decriminalized possession of marijuana for those individuals, she added.

“I think I could have gotten that out of committee,” Wishart said, “but I didn’t feel confident I would have enough votes on the floor and because of that and because it was so narrow, we decided we needed to go back to the ballot.

“There are more people than those with epilepsy that would benefit from having access,” she added.

Eggers said she likely would have stepped aside had the Legislature acted on the “right to try” legislation, which she says would have helped her son. But with the bill still sitting in committee and with its paths closed this year, she said she’s prepared to throw herself behind the ballot initiative again.

“I voiced this to several senators that if the Legislature does not do something, anything to show progress, that we would do it ourselves,” Eggers said. “It was a straight-up threat, and I intend to follow through with that threat.”

The new ballot initiatives revive what Wishart called the “battle-tested” language reviewed by local and state attorneys used in a previous effort that fell just short of gathering the needed votes in 2022.

Wishart, who is one of the sponsors of the initiative, said filing the petition language more than a year ahead of the July 2024 deadline for qualifying for the ballot will give the campaign a long runway to collect the necessary number of signatures.

“What we’ve learned is that we don’t have to wait for a major donor to start,” she said. “We basically collected 180,000 signatures on a volunteer-led, shoestring budget campaign the last time around, and now we’ve got a year and a half to do what we did in three months last time.”

Eggers added the lessons learned from falling just short in two campaigns over the last two years have been used to adjust the strategy moving forward.

“We have signers who have signed this petition, not once but twice,” she said. “We have a lot going for us, and I think we have the ability to get it done.”