Last night, a controversial Ohio ballot initiative that would have regulated marijuana for adults was voted down by a relatively wide margin, marking the first time that a major state referendum to make marijuana legal for adults has failed since 2010. However, the defeat of a marijuana-related ballot initiative in the Buckeye State will have no bearing on the outcomes of several marijuana-related initiatives expected to appear on state ballots next year.

A proposal to make marijuana legal for adults and regulate it like alcohol has already qualified for the November 2016 ballot in Nevada, and similar measures are expected to qualify for the ballots in Arizona, California, Maine, and Massachusetts. The measures do not include the widely unpopular “monopoly” language included in the 2015 Ohio initiative that limited the commercial cultivation of marijuana to only 10 predetermined producers. The 2016 initiatives are also expected to benefit significantly from heightened voter turnout during a presidential election.

MPP is supporting several of the 2016 initiative efforts. We neither supported nor opposed the Ohio initiative this year.

“It’s pretty obvious that the outcome in Ohio does not reflect where the nation stands or the direction in which it is heading when it comes to marijuana policy," said MPP's Mason Tvert. "It only reflects where Ohio voters stand on a specific and rather unique proposal in an off-year election. It will not have any bearing on the outcomes of the initiatives that we expect to appear on other states’ ballots in 2016.

“When voters in Nevada or Massachusetts get to the ballot box one year from now, they are not going to be thinking about what happened in Ohio a year earlier. They are going to be thinking about the problems marijuana prohibition has caused their states for so many years and the benefits of replacing it with a more sensible system. These initiatives will also benefit from heightened voter turnout during a presidential election year. The more voters that turn out, the more support we tend to see for marijuana policy reform.

“Polls show a strong and growing majority of Americans think marijuana should be legal for adults. There is a lot of momentum building behind the movement to end marijuana prohibition heading into 2016. Election Day was relatively uneventful this year, but next year it will be truly historic.”

New Approach South Dakota (NASD) is collecting signatures for a proposal to make medical marijuana legal! This ballot initiative will appear on the 2016 ballot if supporters can collect enough signatures by November 9. That’s only a week away!

To help get the measure past the finish line, contact NASD’s Melissa Mentele at melmentele@yahoo.com.

If the proposal appears on the 2016 ballot and is approved by the voters, it would:

-- Legalize the medical use of marijuana for patients with a medical practitioner’s certification and one of several listed conditions, including cancer, AIDS/HIV, seizure disorders, PTSD, and severe pain;
-- Allow patients and their caregivers to possess up to three ounces of cannabis and grow six plants;
-- Create a licensing system to provide patients with safe access to medical cannabis, allow businesses to process, dispense, and test medical cannabis products; and
-- Prohibit public smoking and driving under the influence of marijuana.

The full measure can be viewed here. Support for compassionate medical marijuana policy is an urgent matter for some South Dakotans. We encourage residents to contact NASD to ask how you can help support the initiative.

Today, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services announced the opening of a pre-registration process for the therapeutic use of cannabis program. The announcement, which appears on the department’s website, explains that patients and their designated caregivers may now submit their applications and that dispensaries are expected to open in the first quarter of 2016. The application forms are now available online.

Unfortunately, the department still says it will not begin issuing ID cards until the first dispensary is ready to open. This means patients could continue to be without legal protections for several more months. However, at least it is now possible for patients to submit applications rather than simply waiting for the program to become operational.

We encourage patients to pre-register, as this will reduce the chances the department will experience a backlog when it begins issuing ID cards.

Please share this news with your friends and family, and especially with any patients you know who have been waiting to benefit from this program.

Over the weekend, the November 2015 issue of the Delaware Register of Regulations was published, expanding the legal protections of the state’s medical marijuana act to reach more individuals. The published regulations officially added "autism with self-injurious or aggressive behavior" to the list of conditions, giving doctors one more treatment option should they think it would benefit their patients.

The condition was added after a petition to do so was submitted to the Department of Health and Social Services. The department took testimony and conducted its own research on the matter, and it ultimately concluded that the petition had merit and the condition should be added. This is the first condition to be added by the petition process in Delaware.

Thank you to everyone who spoke in support of the petition, as well as those who attended the Medical Marijuana Act Oversight Committee meeting last week to share your experience with the program to date.

Medical marijuana unexpectedly dominated much of the news coverage following a recent debate between the major party candidates for Kentucky governor, Republican Matt Bevin and Democrat Jack Conway.

Conway, Kentucky's former Attorney General, tried to dismiss the issue from serious consideration. “I don’t want to hear from some hipsters out in Hawaii saying Kentucky needs medical marijuana,” he reportedly said. Bevin, on the other hand, acknowledged “there is unequivocal medical evidence” that medical marijuana is beneficial for certain conditions.

[caption id="attachment_9298" align="alignright" width="200"] Matt Bevin[/caption]

Bevin made it clear that he does not support legalization for adult use, but he also acknowledged that prohibition has been unsuccessful:

“We’re on the campus of a university,” the Republican said. Addressing the students in the audience of one thousand, he asked: “Is it not already easy for you to find this on the streets? Come on! Who are we kidding? The only people who can’t get it are the people who abide by the law!”

For information on how and where to vote in the election on November 3, visit the Kentucky State Board of Elections’ Voter Information Center.

MPP has upgraded Mike Huckabee, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders in its report card-style voter guide to the 2016 major party presidential candidates. The voter guide can be viewed online at http:// mpp.org/president.

More changes could follow the Republican candidate debate scheduled to take place Wednesday in Boulder, Colorado, where the candidates are likely to discuss the state’s laws that regulate marijuana for adult and medical use.

From The Hill:

[caption id="attachment_9295" align="alignright" width="201"] Mike Huckabee (Photo: Gage Skidmore)[/caption]

"This idea of recreational marijuana, let’s let Colorado have at it for a few years and let’s see how that works out for them,” Huckabee told a local Iowa television station earlier this month. "I’ve been to Amsterdam a few times; I don’t want us to look like Amsterdam. And a lot of people in Colorado aren’t liking the way that’s headed either.

“I’m willing to let states operate under the 10th Amendment,” the former Arkansas governor added. "I’m willing for the states — if they think that marijuana and the legalization of it is a great thing — I’m willing for them to experiment and find out. And if it works and it turns out that the presence of recreational marijuana makes them a more prosperous state … well heck, we may just all want to reach out there and grab that.”

The Minnesota Office of Medical Cannabis Advisory Panel on Intractable Pain will meet on Thursday to decide if intractable pain should be added to the list of qualifying medical conditions under the state’s medical marijuana law. While the public is welcome to attend the meeting, please note that public comment will not be taken on Thursday.

WHAT: Advisory Panel on Intractable Pain meeting
WHEN: Thursday, October 29, 1:00 - 3:00 p.m. CT
WHERE: Amherst H. Wilder Center — Auditorium A, St. Paul

For the past two months, the Minnesota Department of Health has been hosting meetings across the state to solicit public feedback on whether intractable pain should be added. Reports indicate an overwhelming majority of attendees supported adding pain. They also accepted written comments from potential and certified medical cannabis patients, their caregivers and loved ones, health care practitioners, and other interested parties. Just this past weekend, the Star Tribune published an editorial urging the Department of Health to add intractable pain to the state’s medical marijuana law.

Thank you so much to everyone who attended the community hearings, submitted comments, and urged your friends and family to do so, too. These simple acts may soon mean a world of difference for some suffering neighbors.

Two competing marijuana initiative campaigns in Maine announced they will unite behind one state ballot measure to end marijuana prohibition in 2016.

The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, backed by MPP, will stop collecting signatures in support of the initiative it filed in March and spearhead the campaign in support of a similar initiative filed in February by Legalize Maine. Each of the campaigns has collected approximately 40,000 signatures, and they will work together to collect the remaining signatures needed to qualify for the November 2016 ballot. They have until January to collect a total of approximately 61,000 valid signatures of registered Maine voters.

Portland Press Herald reports:

The development ends the fragmentation among supporters of legalization that made the movement vulnerable to divisions by opponents, and it also eliminates the possibility that voters would pass two legalization questions, which would have forced the legalization language into the hands of the Legislature.

While advocates say they’re confident Maine is ready for legalized marijuana, they were also concerned having two very similar proposals on the ballot would create confusion about voters who would have to parse out the differences. If both qualified for the ballot and were approved, the Legislature would have had to undertake the messy task of sorting out conflicts in statute.

“We’ve all been concerned about having two initiatives and splitting the vote,” said state Rep. Diane Russell, D-Portland, a longtime legalization advocate who has supported the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol. “I think when it comes down to it, the people of Maine support legalizing marijuana in a responsible, safe manner. There would have been confusion about which one to support.”

"Joining forces is the best step forward, not only for our respective campaigns, but for Maine as a whole," said David Boyer, campaign manager for the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol. "We all agree marijuana prohibition has been a colossal failure and that it must be replaced with a system in which marijuana is legal for adults and regulated like alcohol. We can more effectively accomplish our shared goal by combining our resources and working together instead of on parallel tracks.

“We had some differences of opinion on some of the specifics, but our initiatives were largely similar overall. We would not get behind this measure unless we were 100% confident that it will effectively and responsibly end prohibition in Maine. We’re also confident that the voters will agree."

Early this week, the Brookings Institution released a report titled 'Ending the U.S. government's war on medical marijuana research', which analyzes the ways in which the federal government hinders effective research, and how these policies could be changed.

The federal government is stifling medical research in a rapidly transforming area of public policy that has consequences for public health and public safety. As medical marijuana becomes increasingly accessible in state-regulated, legal markets, and as others self-medicate in jurisdictions that do not allow the medical use of cannabis, it is increasingly important that the scientific community conduct research on this substance. However, statutory, regulatory, bureaucratic, and cultural barriers have paralyzed science and threatened the integrity of research freedom in this area. It is time for the federal government to recognize the serious public policy risks born from limited medical, public health, and pharmaceutical research into cannabis and its use.

You can read the full report here.

A Gallup poll released Wednesday shows 58% of adults in the United States think marijuana should be made legal, up from 51% in October 2014. Just 40% think it should remain illegal.

The national poll of 1,015 adults was conducted October 7-11 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4%. The full results are available at here.

Americans' support for legalizing marijuana is the highest Gallup has measured to date, at 58%. Given the patterns of support by age, that percentage should continue to grow in the future. Younger generations of Americans have been increasingly likely to favor legal use of marijuana as they entered adulthood compared with older generations of Americans when they were the same age decades ago. Now, more than seven in 10 of today's young adults support legalization.

But Americans today -- particularly those between 35 and 64 -- are more supportive of legal marijuana than members of their same birth cohort were in the past. Now senior citizens are alone among age groups in opposing pot legalization.

These trends suggest that state and local governments may come under increasing pressure to ease restrictions on marijuana use, if not go even further like the states of Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Alaska in making recreational marijuana use completely legal.