Nebraska’s Medical Marijuana Petition Reaches Significant Milestone | KLIN

Outpacing numerous past efforts, Nebraska advocates for medical marijuana legalization have reached a notable turning-point in their signature gathering effort to place the issue in voters hands on the 2024 general election ballot in November.

Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana (NMM) Campaign Manager Crista Eggers shared with KLIN News, by their count, petition circulators have qualified 38 of Nebraska’s 93 counties with 5% of registered voters signing their pair two petitions — one to establish the doctor/patient system and the other to regulate the industry.

By Nebraska law established by the Secretary of State’s Office, petition initiatives must meet two requirements (1) collect signatures equaling 7% of the registered voters in the state, currently resting at 87,000 and (2) signatures must be collected from 5% of the registered voters in 38 of the 93 Nebraska counties.

Put simply, NMM is halfway there. But Eggers says they’re not letting off the gas just yet.

“There’s no time to sit back, celebrate, and pat ourselves on the back,” Eggers said, determined. “Our strategy this go around was to go after the counties, get them qualified, and then pivot to our bulk collection… now we shift to getting the overage and hitting the 87,000 signature requirement that we’ll need to be successful.”

Further, Eggers is hoping to have a comfortable surplus of signatures when the NMM team turns them in to Secretary of State Bob Evnen on the July 3rd turn-in deadline.

“There is not a county in the state that we don’t need signatures from. We need to continue collecting. We need to continue qualifying counties,” she said.

With less than 50 days of signature collecting until then, the NMM team is “all hands on deck.”

“Being a grassroots campaign, we are relying on volunteers. We always have,” said Eggers, who’s been involved in the group’s unsuccessful petition drives in years prior.

“I often say that our campaign is made up of a horrifically beautiful story. It absolutely should not be the case that patients have to be out collecting signatures in the heat and the rain and the wind to get access to a medicine,” Eggers remarked.

The issue of medical cannabis is personal for Eggers too, as her 10-year-old son suffers from epilepsy and severe seizures. Medical cannabis is a potential treatment for seizures, and can present less intense side-effects than other drug treatments, studies have shown.

Coincidently, the U.S. Department of Justice announced plans the same afternoon to formally reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug. Since the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970, marijuana has been classified as a Schedule (1) drug, the same classification of drugs like heroin, LSD, and methamphetamine.

Eggers was “excited” to hear the news, and hopes a federal reclassification will give their campaign an added sense of gravitas. Schedule (1) is the only drug classification banned from medical use.

One of the main concerns of medical cannabis critics, Eggers says, is marijuana’s “high potential for abuse” designation.

“I’m excited to revisit conversations with the folks who have been sitting on the sidelines — or actively in our way — and say the federal government now has changed, that’s what you wanted to see. Now let’s get on the same page in moving forward,” said Eggers.

Despite the advantage, Eggers is not banking on federal reclassification.

“But this does not change what we are doing here on the state level. In fact, it makes our campaign more important because now the federal government has signaled that marijuana is a medicine… so it makes the petition more important, because nothing is going to happen fast at the federal level,” she added.

Nebraska is one of three states in the U.S. that does not allow medical cannabis to be prescribed to patients under any circumstance.

Eggers says their bulk signature collection efforts will mainly levy population centers like Omaha and Lincoln, but still across the across the state, targeting high foot traffic events such as farmers markets. Nebraskans can also request a petition be sent to them, which can be signed by others too.

“This is being done for the people, by the people,” Eggers said of her team of 50 volunteers. “And we need the people to step up and help us reach this goal… Other campaigns that have millions of dollars at their disposal, they’ve got hundreds of petitioners that are flown in to collect these signatures. It’s a different situation for us. This is in the people’s hands.”

For more information on Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana, visit nebraskamarijuana.org.