Allegations Surface that State Question Not Pushed by Activists, but by Out of State Liberals to Turn Out the Vote in November 2020
Thousands of medical marijuana patients are speaking out in opposition to a 'full access' marijuana initiative petition. At least one prominent lawyer has pledged to file a contest with the Oklahoma Supreme Court. But we still don't know who wrote the proposed constitutional amendment that cannabis advocates seem to hate.
There are a few articles covering the petition. SoonerPolitics.org published a critical review of the proposal that can read it at this link.
Nigel O'Mally has been a market analyst for the medical marijuana program. He wrote this unflattering early review.
A shadowy group filed an initiative petition on Dec. 12th. No press conference or press releases were done. It wasn't unto the following week that we saw the first coverage in the media. On Dec 19th a legal notice was published, signaling the countdown of 10 business days to file a contest of the proposed constitutional amendment to radically change marijuana laws in Oklahoma. We do know that radical leftists are involved in this push. the head of the ACLU in Oklahoma (Ryan Keisel) has taken to media outlets to sing the praises of this document. But he dodges and evades answering most hard-hitting questions about the way it was created.
Keisel says that a PAC was formed & funded to cover the cost of hiring signature-gatherers for a bill which looks very much like the disasters in California, Oregon, & Washington State. The taxes are ridiculous, the crony capitalist licensing schemes will likely pave the way for national operations to leverage out the local 'mom & pops' businesses which grew up over the past 16 months, it's so poorly written that it will need court rulings and companion legislation (or constitutional fixes) before it can truly get implemented.
And then there's the backlash against 3 individuals who've positioned themselves as spokespeople for the patients. Chris Moe, Dr. Lawrence Pasternack, & Norma Sapp have suddenly gone quite silent about how they denied the other 225,000 marijuana patients & advocates any opportunity to collaborate in the way this movement has previously operated. It's a stain on the integrity of the movement when the leaders openly deceive their allies and position themselves for sweetheart deals with the crony capitalists they secretly work for.
Many medical cannabis patients believe this is too early for a reconsideration of our marijuana prohibition. And lawmakers insist that this kind of statutory matter needs to be kept off the state's constitution. SQ788 had obvious flaws but the legislature had the ability to act quickly to address them. A Constitutional amendment takes years to accomplish, and even more years to fix the mistakes of so why the rush? One clue we can't overlook is the way that a leftist Democrat operative like Ryan Keisel of the Oklahoma ACLU was involved in filing a shabby and ambiguous petition like this.
Many believe that it's not all that important to Keisel if this ballot question passes in November of 2020 or not. I think he's more concerned about having a marijuana question to get proponents out to the polls in numbers approaching what we saw in June of 2018. His biggest allies are the leftist set of candidates who would possibly benefit from having a massive voter turnout to help keep Democrats like Kendra Horn in office. And Horn desperately needs every trick that the national Democratic Party can come up with.
