Not this year.
Arkansas voters won't be voting on a proposal to legalize medical marijuana in November.
They will apparently get to consider two other initiatives: raising the state minimum wage and expanding alcohol sales statewide.
Petitioners for those measures submitted sufficient signatures to keep their respective drives alive, but the medical marijuana supporters failed to gather the necessary signatures by Monday's deadline to get the issue on the state ballot.
It was a bit of a surprise they didn't get the 62,507 signatures necessary, but they fell more than 10,000 short of the goal.
Two years ago, Arkansas came within 30,000 votes of passing a medical marijuana law. The campaign had come so close to a win, the expectation was that a new petition drive this year might lead to passage of the controversial law.
Surely, there would be enough supporters out there to sign the petition and get it to the ballot. After all, more than 500,000 Arkansas voters were for the legalization of medical marijuana two years ago (530,000 were against it).
A competing proposal to allow both medical and recreational use of the drug complicated this year's petition effort. That competition might have contributed to this year's petition drive's failure, but there might also have been a bit of overconfidence among the medical marijuana supporters.
They are not giving up, however. Arkansans for Compassionate Care, the group that proposed the measure that came so close to passage in 2014, has promised to be back in 2016.
Remember, their proposal was about allowing patients with qualifying medical conditions to purchase marijuana from nonprofit dispensaries. It is not the same as the recreational use allowed in Colorado and more recently in Washington state.
Medical marijuana laws have found favor in 22 states and the District of Columbia to date. More may be added this year -- just not in Arkansas.
Attitudes toward the drug, particularly for medical use, have clearly changed over time. National polling shows a majority of Americans support legalization of the drug for either medical or recreational use.
And an Arkansas poll on the medical marijuana question earlier this year resulted in a statistical tie at 45 percent for and 45.5 percent against.
Eventually, there might even be public support for a broader law to decriminalize marijuana use here, as in Colorado, which is collecting millions of dollars in new taxes while regulating the sale of marijuana for recreational use.
We'll see how the environment changes over the next two years, especially since relaxing marijuana laws could also ease the state's prison overcrowding problems.
Meanwhile, Arkansas voters will apparently vote on one initiated act and on one petition-driven constitutional amendment this year.
Give Arkansas a Raise Now, the group pushing the minimum-wage proposal, turned in more than 77,000 signatures for its proposal.
The initiated act, if adopted by voters in November, would gradually raise the minimum wage from $6.25 an hour to $8.50 an hour in 2017. The state's minimum wage now is a dollar below the federal rate of $7.25 and Arkansas is only one of four states with that low a minimum wage.
The secretary of state's office will review the petitions first to confirm the group submitted the required count of 62,507 signatures and later to verify the signatures for the change in the minimum-wage law.
The same is true for a constitutional amendment that would alter state alcohol law. A constitutional amendment requires submission of at least 78,133 valid signatures.
Let Arkansas Decide has petitioned to legalize alcohol sales in all 75 Arkansas counties, where voters have been able for decades to prohibit such sales at the local level. Thirty-seven counties do not allow alcohol sales.
State law allowing citizens to petition for a local election on such "wet-dry" issues make it extremely difficult to gather enough signatures. It can be done, as Benton and Madison counties proved in recent years; but the process is expensive and time-consuming. Notably, in those two counties, once a petition drive succeeded, the subsequent vote to legalize alcohol sales was overwhelming.
Petitioners for the proposed amendment say they submitted 84,969 signatures, well over the required number; so voters will likely decide whether to allow alcohol sales statewide, eliminating the need for those local wet-dry elections and the petition drives that must precede them.
BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.
Commentary on 07/09/2014