The Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act received enough valid signatures to appear on the ballot, Melissa Fults, campaign manager for Arkansans for Compassionate Care, said in an interview Thursday. Kerry Baldwin, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office, confirmed that the group did meet the signature threshold. It is the first initiated proposal to clear that hurdle; today is the deadline for submitting petitions for a general election ballot proposal.
In an interview, Fults said she planned to spend Thursday celebrating, but she also repeated a call for David Couch, a Little Rock lawyer, to withdraw his Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment. If both proposals appear on the ballot, both will fail, she said.
"We're not going to give up," Fults said. "We're going to continue to fight."
As the news spread Thursday, Jerry Cox, executive director of the Arkansas Family Council Action Committee, vowed to oppose both medical-marijuana measures. In an interview, he said his group will verify petitions, consider making a legal challenge and campaign against both proposals.
"If we have to battle David and Jerry, we're going to be fighting on two fronts, but the upside is we don't back down, we're not afraid to fight," Fults said. "We have 1,000 volunteers on top of that. You can't buy loyalty."
At a news conference, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he also opposed the measure.
"I believe that while we want to provide medicine to anyone who needs it, this opens up a lot of doors that causes more problems than it solves," said Hutchinson, a former director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. attorney and federal homeland security undersecretary. "And we do want to continue to listen to the medical community as what is good medicine and not, so I challenge them to speak up.
