Medical ‘pot’ on ballot fails

49% of vote heartens backers

Supporters of the failed effort to legalize the medical use of marijuana said Wednesday that they aren’t giving up and voters will see the initiative again.

The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act, which appeared on the ballot as Issue 5, failed Tuesday night after receiving 49 percent of the vote, according to unofficial election results from the secretary of state.

Arkansans for Compassionate Care, the group supporting the measure, worked to get voters to think of legalizing medical use of marijuana as a compassionate wayto help people when other medicines fail them. Opponents said it would increase marijuana use by teens and lead to the eventual legalization of marijuana use for any reason.

On Tuesday, Colorado and Washington state voters approved measures to legalize all marijuana use. A similar measure failed in Oregon. In Massachusetts, voters joined 17 other states and Washington D.C., in legalizing medical use of the drug.

If voters had approved Issue 5, Arkansas would have been the first state in the South to make medical use of the drug legal.

That nearly half of voters supported the issue surprised some who opposed it.

“Either polling I was privy to was a little off or [supporters] closed the gap in the final days, but a win is a win,” said Arkansas Faith and Ethics Council Executive Director Larry Page.

The act would have legalized the medical use of marijuana and required the state Department of Health to set up a system of nonprofit dispensaries to distribute up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana at a time to Arkansans certified by doctors as having certain diseases or symptoms.

After working to get support for the proposal for months, Arkansans for Compassionate Care campaign strategist Chris Kell said the group isn’t giving up.

“First we sleep, and then we’re going to regroup and try it stronger and harder than we have in the past,” he said.

Kell said Arkansans for Compassionate Care will first try to get a medicinal use of marijuana act approved by the state Legislature. If that fails, it plans to put the matter before voters again, Kell said.

He said he hopes legislators will be swayed by how much support the measure had.

“It gives them a pretty compelling argument to at least move it forward to a vote,” he said.

Arkansans for Compassionate Care spokesman David Couch said the group plans to address concerns raised by opponents of the act, specifically a provision that would have allowed patients who live more than 5 miles from a dispensary to grow marijuana.

“I think the ‘grow your own’ [provision] is really what cost us,” Couch said.

An opponent of the measure, Family Council Action Committee Executive Director Jerry Cox agreed.

“I think that was probably the hardest thing for them to defend,” Cox said. He said even with changes, “I justcan’t see that they would have enough support among lawmakers to get it referred [to voters].”

Opposition to the measure became more pronounced in the final weeks of the campaign, Cox said, because opponents did not expect the measure to get on the ballot. If the issue goes before voters again, Cox said the Family Council and the religious, law enforcement and medical groups that opposed the measure will be more vigilant.

“You can bet we will start working against it much sooner,” Cox said. He said the measure received so much support because people didn’t understand what Issue 5 would do.

“I think a large number of voters were still on a pretty steep learning curve about so-called medical marijuana,” he said.

Page said some voters who supported Issue 5 may have thought it was a referendum on compassionate health care and didn’t understand the act.

“People want to be kind and compassionate and help people, that’s human behavior,” Page said.

Kell said the dividing line came down to those who were informed and voted in favor of the measure andthose who had been “misinformed” by the Family Council.

“That’s our biggest barrier. If we didn’t have that misinformation out there in the first place, we would have won in a landslide,” Kell said.

Gov. Mike Beebe, who opposed Issue 5, said he was surprised that it was defeated by such a slim margin, but the results didn’t change his mind on the issue.

“My concern ... had nothing to do with the compassionate part of it,” Beebe said.

His concerns were about the estimated $3.29 million to $6.38 million state cost to create a program to oversee it. Beebe also expressed concern that the measure would conflict with federal laws making marijuana possession a crime.

Emily Williams of Fayetteville, who used marijuana to treat nausea and pain while undergoing chemotherapy to treat lymphoma, said she is encouraged by the vote totals.

“When you look at the results of the election: It was very close,” said Williams, who appeared in ads for the campaign. “I am now devoting myself to this.”

More than 1 million Arkansans voted on the ballot issueTuesday. The measure failed by less than 30,000 votes.

And in some counties, it was even closer.

Carroll County voters passed the measure by just 53 votes - 4,981 to 4,928. In Woodruff County, it passed by 23 votes - 1,328 to 1,305.

The state’s metropolitan areas cast the most votes in favor of the issue, along with a smattering of rural counties.

In central Arkansas, Pulaski, Perry, Jefferson and Garland counties all passed the measure, as did the Delta counties of Chicot, Crittenden, Lee, Woodruff and Phillips. Washington, Sebastian, Johnson and Carroll counties in Northwest Arkansas also voted in favor of the issue.

Pulaski and Washington counties carried the measure’s biggest victories of the night, passing it by 20,000 votes and 9,000 votes, respectively.

Most of southern Arkansas, and northeastern and north-central Arkansas rejected the issue.

Opposition was strongest in Sevier County, where antimarijuana forces captured 64 percent of the vote.

Information for this article was contributed by Amy Schlesing and Tracie Dungan of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 11/08/2012

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