It’s been a nerve wrecking week watching the presidential vote count but it’s also been a very exciting week for the marijuana arena with four more states in the U.S. legalizing the drug.
Montana, Arizona, New Jersey, and South Dakota have legalized marijuana on a recreational level this week.
According to CNN projections Montana has voted to establish 21 as the legal age to purchase, possess and consume cannabis by constitutional amendment. Arizona and New Jersey also voted to legalize recreational marijuana, while South Dakota approved legalization for both recreational and medical use.
South Dakota will be the first state ever to approve medical and recreational marijuana measures at the same time.
Results have not yet been determined for Montana’s other ballot question related to legalizing recreational marijuana and neither have Mississippi’s medical marijuana measure.
The New Jersey ballot question read: “Do you approve amending the Constitution to legalize a controlled form of marijuana called ‘cannabis’?”
Public Question No. 1 will amend the state constitution to legalize cannabis for personal, non-medical use by adults 21 and older. The state commission that oversees the medical market will also regulate the personal market.
Opponent Gregg Edwards, executive director of Don’t Let NJ Go to Pot has called the move to change the state’s constitution “pretty extreme.”
“Now cannabis is going to appear in the New Jersey Constitution alongside the freedom to associate,” he said. “And once it’s in the Constitution, the likelihood of it coming out is slim or next to none.”
South Dakota had two measures on the ballot. Measure 26, which would establish a medical cannabis program and registration system for people with qualifying conditions and Amendment A, which would legalize cannabis for all adults and require state legislators to adopt medical cannabis and hemp laws.
Republican Gov. Kristi Noem opposed both ballot measures and said, “The fact is, I’ve never met someone who got smarter for smoking pot. It’s not good for our kids and it’s not going to improve our communities.”
Arizona’s Proposition 207 will allow adults 21 and older to possess, consume or transfer up to 1 ounce of cannabis and create a regulatory system for the drug’s cultivation and sale.
Republican Gov. Doug Ducey opposed this year’s ballot measure and asked voters to again vote “No.”
“The current system with medical marijuana is serving the people who need it for health-related reasons,” Ducey said. “We don’t need the wholesale expansion that full-throttle legalization will bring.”
Montana had two initiatives. Initiative 190 would allow adults in the state to possess and buy cannabis for recreational use and defined a 20% tax on recreational cannabis and would also allow people serving sentences for certain cannabis-related acts to apply for resentencing or records expungement. Initiative 118, the second question, would amend the state’s constitution to establish 21 as the legal age to purchase, possess and consume cannabis.
“We took a series of steps to make sure the pandemic didn’t take away Montana’s constitutional ballot initiative process,” said Matthew Schweich, deputy director at the Marijuana Policy Project.
Mississippi had two proposals to legalize medical marijuana. The state’s unique ballot structure asks voters whether they are for approving either Initiative 65 or Initiative 65A, or against both.
Initiative 65 would allow physicians to recommend medical cannabis for patients with any of 22 qualifying conditions and Initiative 65A would limit the smoking of medical cannabis to people who are terminally ill, and would leave the regulatory framework up to the Legislature.
