Nebraska’s Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s medical cannabis initiative violated the single-issue rule, preventing it from appearing on ballots in November, the Lincoln Journal-Star reports. The case was brought to the court on behalf of Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner.
The state’s highest court determined that the question and various other provisions included in the proposal lacked natural and necessary connection to each other and that it had a total of eight issues, the report says.
The general purpose of the measure was to create a constitutional right for seriously ill people to use and produce medical cannabis with a recommendation by a licensed physician or nurse practitioner. Subsections of the proposal would have allowed patients the constitutional property right to sell and grow cannabis and give them criminal immunity from current state law. Other parts of the act would have barred smoking cannabis in public or operating a motor vehicle while under the influence – these, the court rules, were not naturally connected to the general subject.
Democratic State Sens. Anna Wishart and Adam Morfeld, who sponsored both the petition initiative and a bill to legalize medical cannabis, said in a statement that they were “deeply disappointed by the ruling and promised to go “back to the ballot and to the Legislature.”
The state Senate last year tabled a medical cannabis proposal even after Wishart agreed to all of the opposition’s amendments to limit products and delivery methods.
Secretary of State Bob Evnen told the Journal-Star that he would comply with the Supreme Court ruling.
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