Oklahoma Passes Most Progressive Medical Marijuana Initiative Since California’s Prop 215
One of the reddest of red states went green on Tuesday, when voters in Oklahoma approved a remarkably progressive medical marijuana initiative by a healthy margin of 56% to 43%.
The initiative,State Question 778, allows registered patients to possess up to three ounces of marijuana anywhere and up to eight ounces at home. Patients also have the right to grow up to six mature and six immatureplantsor have designated caregiversdoit for them.
It also creates a system of licensed dispensaries, cultivation, and processing facilities and sets taxes at a relatively low 7%. The initiative also bars localities from using zoning laws to block dispensaries (although they wouldnt be allowed within 1,000 feet of a school).
But what is most striking about Question 778 is that it does not restrict access to medical marijuana to a list of qualifying conditions. In fact, the initiative language explicitly states that [T]here are no qualifying conditions and that the only limitation on a doctors recommending medical marijuana is that it must be done according to the accepted standards a reasonable and prudent physician would follow when recommending or approving any medication.
That is the most wide-open language for a medical marijuana since Californias groundbreaking Proposition 215 back in 1996. Prop 215 included a list of qualifying conditions, but also allow recommendations for any other chronic or persistent medical symptomthat may cause serious harm to the patients health.
That Prop 215 language allowed medical marijuana to flourish in California and establish itself as something very near to actual legalization. Basically, anybody in the state who had the money to pay for a doctors visit could get a medical marijuana cardand they did.
Oklahoma isnt likely ...
