Recreational marijuana may be on the ballot in 2020. The proposed Smart & Safe Arizona ballot initiative began collecting signatures this month for placement of a proposition to decriminalize marijuana for adults aged 21 and over and expand the legal market from medical-only to adult-use.
The new initiative would grant cities and counties greater control over new marijuana establishments and would still prohibit driving with marijuana in the driver’s system.
The failed 2016 ballot measure would have sent 80% of marijuana takes to K-12 education, but the new proposal would split marijuana tax money, sending a third each to law enforcement, roads and community colleges. The proponents say this split may increase the support in rural communities, which are suffering from a lack of road funding as most of the state’s allocation of transportation money currently goes to freeways and new roads in Phoenix and Tucson.
What may also change the game this election cycle is the absence of a major donor to Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy, the main anti-marijuana group that opposed Proposition 205, which would have legalized recreational marijuana in 2016. Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy received a huge $500,000 donation from Insys Therapeutics, a Chandler-based pharmaceutical company whose main source of revenue was from the sale of opioids. Its most profitable opioid drugs were fentanyl derivatives. The donation was the largest in the history of efforts to oppose medical or recreational marijuana legalization.
Insys Therapeutics likely had a vested interest in keeping recreational and medical marijuana out of the public market as the pain-reliving facets of marijuana could reduce the need for patients with chronic pain to require opioids, like those manufactured by Insys and other pharmaceutical companies. Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy board co-chairs Seth Leibsohn and Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery and the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry sued to keep Proposition 205 off the ballot, arguing that the wording of the ballot summary was vague, but the Arizona Supreme Court allowed the proposition, judging that, “The ballot summary is as clear as it can be in 100 words.”
After the ballot measure was restored, Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy made 2016 campaign ads — with Insys’ funding — that were deemed “Half True” or “Mostly False” by Politifact, a website which fact-checks political statements from elected officials, campaigns and political organizations. Many of the claims were not based on medicine or science but gut emotional appeals, and ultimately voters rejected the proposition and recreational marijuana remains illegal in Arizona.
Insys Therapeutics likely won’t be active in this election cycle. Due to mounting lawsuits against the company starting in 2017, related to the opioid crisis, Insys announced in August it would be closing its offices around the country. On May 2, the U.S. District Attorney in Boston convicted the founder and four former executives of Insys for defrauding Medicare and private insurance carriers and bribing medical practitioners to prescribe Subsys, a highly-addictive sublingual fentanyl spray intended for cancer patients experiencing breakthrough pain. Arizona voters narrowly approved medical marijuana in 2010. There has been little trouble from such users and the economic boost from marijuana grow facilities, including several in the Verde Valley, has benefitted the local economy.
Whether a recreational marijuana ballot measure appears in 2020 is still up in the air, and Arizona voters may feel medical marijuana is sufficient without legalizing recreational marijuana. Hopefully, the election debate will be a fair one, based solely on the merits without the meddling of outside special interests looking to subvert democracy to protect their profit margin.
Christopher Fox Graham-Managing Editor
