Oklahoma has had a robust medical marijuana market for almost ten years now. It’s become so popular that many from Texas make the trek northward to get their prescription before returning home.
However, the Republican party is having an existential crisis over how it sees marijuana policy. There’s the old school, more stringent faction that opposes marijuana entirely, and then the new school, more libertarian view that wants to allow it completely. President Trump tends to hop merrily between both sides.
The Oklahoma Governor is firmly on the old school side. On Monday during a State of the State address, Governor Kevin Stitt brought up the idea of shutting down the program entirely due to public safety issues.
Since then, some lawmakers have responded, including the Senate President Lonnie Paxton. Being on Stitt’s side, he was open to the idea, although emphasized that the will of the voters must be respected. This implies that repealing medical marijuana wouldn’t go down very well.
“When you’re actually reversing the vote of the people—I think the appropriate place would be to put it back in front of the people rather than just saying, ‘Oh, this didn’t work, we’re going to undo your state question. We do take seriously the voters’ intent and what the voters actually voted on,” Paxton said.
Paxton is on the side of revising the program that’s already in place as opposed to chopping it down entirely.
The Lieutenant Governor of the Chickasaw Nation also took a slightly nuanced approach to the question of repeal. He claims the program has “been a problem all over Oklahoma” and that would want to reform the law, as opposed to outright banning it.
Oklahoma is in an interesting position. The hardliners can no longer call for outright repeal, and instead they’re reluctantly accepting the will of the people, hoping to limit its scope as a compromise.
It’s unclear how far this initiative could even get in the state, but reform is a much easier route than anything more drastic.
Read the original article at Marijuana Moment.
