Arkansas voters decisively rejected a ballot effort to legalize recreational marijuana. However, backers have promised to submit a better proposal in 2024.
The state was one of five in voting on cannabis legalization. Other states like Missouri and Maryland passed their referedums, making those states the 20th and 21st in the country to do so for adults.
Social conservatives and marijuana advocates joined together to reject the Arkansas Adult Use Cannabis Amendment because they felt it didn’t go far enough.
Former Issue 4 opponent and medicinal marijuana patient advocate Melissa Fults announced that she will be a leader in the next initiative campaign in 2024.
Fults, who hopes to go into business with the lawyer who crafted Arkansas’ medical marijuana amendment in 2016, has indicated that the 2024 offering will fix the problems with Issue 4.
For the average person, “we’ll have expungement, home grow and substantially extend the sector and make it more accessible to enter into the market,” Fults added.
In an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, a representative for Responsible Growth Arkansas, the group behind Issue 4, suggested that the medical cannabis industry-backed group would submit another amendment to voters in two years’ time.
Final tally: 899,557 votes.
A total of 502,048 rejected legalization at 55.81% and 397,509 in favor of legalization at 44.19% of the registered voters.
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