This Surprising State Could Be the Next to Legalize Marijuana
North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger announced Monday that amarijuana legalization initiativesponsored by the grassroots groupLegalize NDhas qualified for the November ballot.
The group had handed in more than 17,000 raw signatures last month and needed 13,452 valid voter signatures to qualify. On Monday, Jaeger reported 14,637 signatures were valid.
The Legalize ND campaign was able to successfully channel the grassroots enthusiasm for recreational marijuana, said Legalize ND chairman David Owen.
Nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana since 2012, but all of those states have been in the West or the Northeast. This year, with marijuana legalization on the ballot in Michigan as well as North Dakota, legal weed could make a heartland breakthrough.
The North Dakota initiative has some unique features. Heres what it would and wouldnt do:
Its only been two years since North Dakota voters approved a medical marijuana initiative, and the state Health Department is still in the process of setting up a system for producing and distributing the drug. That same year, marijuana legalization supporters came up short on signatures to get on the ballot, but they persevered, and here we are.
North Dakota is a deep red state Donald Trump gotmore than twice as many votesas Hillary Clinton in 2016 but the only poll done so far has the initiative leading. TheJune poll, commissioned by Legalize ND and conducted by the Florida-based Kitchen Group, had the initiative winning 46 percent to 39 percent, with 15 percent undecided.
Thats good but not great news for Legalize ND. Yes, the initiative is leading, but the conventional wisdom among initiative and referendum watchers is that campaigns should be starting off with at least 60 percent support the assumption being that inevitable organized opposition is going to eat away at support levels in the final weeks of the campaign.
And there will be organized opposition. The North Dakota Sheriffs and Deputies Association passed a resolution in May opposing legalization and, now that the initiative has made the ballot, is meeting this week to plot strategy to defeat it.
Association president Pat Rummel, the Billings County sheriff,told the Associated Pressthis week law enforcement worried about potential problems such as impaired driving, more domestic ...
