South Dakota legalization.
Governor Kristi Noem (R) from South Dakota blocked putting cannabis legislative reform on the November ballot in 2020 after state advocates collected enough votes to put it on the ballot. In 2022, Governor Noem is changing her tune on how she approaches cannabis legislation as she is also up for re-election during the November midterm. Governor Noem made the latest comments at an event last week, attempting to explain why she was taking a different approach to citizen-led reform this round by saying that the 2022 initiative "is written more appropriately towards the Constitution." Many believe this narrative change by Gov. Noem is based on pulling numbers. Still, the advocacy group that is pushing for cannabis reform during the 2022 election omitted tax language, which was the prime reason the state supreme court voted to block the attempts in 2020. "Kristi Noem sued the voters the first time we approved recreational marijuana," Smith said on Tuesday in response to reports about the governor's latest remarks. "It's suspicious that this sudden change of heart conveniently happens during an election year." marijuanamoment.net
Call Replay | Cannabis Q&A + Industry Trends Call
CLICK HERE for the webcast replay and materials. |
We hosted our monthly cannabis Q&A + Industry trends call, where we went through state-level sales and other trends we are seeing in the industry. This was an interesting earnings period for the cannabis names, and we recently removed AYRWF, TLLTF, TRSSF, and CNTMF from the long list. We went into detail about why we made these moves and what we are seeing from the remainder of the long names.
What's going on in Oklahoma?
A cannabis advocacy group in Oklahoma was able to secure ~117k signatures, which exceed the ~95k needed to qualify for the November ballot. It is never smooth sailing on the cannabis front, and it looks like Oklahoma will have to find a way around another hurdle. Any changes to the November ballot need to be made before August 29th, which you would think would be no problem since the signatures have been approved by the secretary of state, but the hiccup remains that the supreme court needs to also sign off on the signatures and then it goes into a 10-day public review period where residents of Oklahoma can challenge the validity of the petitions. "This administrative delay was both unexpected and inexplicable," OSML said in its court filing, according to Oklahoma Watch. "Although billed as more 'modern' and 'efficient,' the new electronic process was anything but: it ended up taking more than twice as long as the secretary's hand count in prior years." The state did a nice job of dragging their feet to not get cannabis reform on their November ballot as it looks like they took long enough to systematically block this initiative from being put on the ballot.
