West Virginia activists are pursuing a pair of native marijuana decriminalization initiatives for the November poll, together with within the state capital of Charleston.
Whereas the progressive group West Virginia Can’t Wait sometimes works on electoral politics by supporting candidates who embrace insurance policies that align with its mission, the group’s discipline director Sarah Hutson informed Marijuana Second in a cellphone interview that the group “turned conscious of, previously yr or so, this selection to run municipal poll measures throughout the state of West Virginia.”
So activists have turned their consideration to hashish reform, crafting and qualifying petitions to position decriminalization initiatives on native ballots in Charleston and Fairmont for the November election.
The initiatives wouldn’t totally take away marijuana bans from metropolis statutes. It will nonetheless be thought-about a misdemeanor offense to own restricted quantities of hashish, however there could be “no charges for it, no jail time and no court docket charges.”
The plan is to show in signatures by mid-July for the primary two goal cities, Hutson mentioned, although she added that organizers may match to qualify hashish measures in extra West Virginia municipalities in future elections.
“The response has been nice,” she mentioned. “The common, I believe, is for those who ask 50 individuals to signal, like 49 are going to say sure. And one particular person out of these 50 would possibly say no.”
To date, the marketing campaign has collected greater than 1,000 signatures in Charleston, that means they’re about midway there to qualifying.
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They only lately began signature gathering in Fairmont, the place petitions have been authorised about two weeks in the past. When it comes to volunteers, Hutson mentioned they’ve about 20 to 30 working in Charleston, and 10 in Fairmont.
“We’re accumulating signatures we will depend on. It’s only a matter of how many individuals you could have there to gather them, as a result of persons are so excited by it and actually concerned about seeing hashish decriminalized,” she mentioned. “The present authorities in West Virginia doesn’t mirror the overwhelming will of the individuals, which is that people shouldn’t be going to jail for hashish possession. So it’s been actually superb and simple to gather signatures—actually, it’s only a matter of getting people on the market with clipboards.”
The proposal that West Virginia Can’t Wait is pushing is partly knowledgeable by decriminalization measures which were positioned earlier than Ohio voters in previous native elections, and the marketing campaign has had assist from the Ohio-based Smart Motion Coalition (SMC) in drafting language and coping with authorized issues.
SMC tried to department out from Ohio and get native decriminalization initiatives handed in 4 cities in neighboring West Virginia final yr: Clarksburg, McMechen, Salem and Wheeling, however these efforts didn’t come to fruition. In 2019, Salem voters rejected the same reform proposal on the poll that SMC’s West Virginia affiliate spearheaded.
West Virginia Can’t Wait feels that, primarily based on their early outcomes, issues will play out otherwise in the important thing cities they’re targeted on this cycle.
Along with hoping that the marijuana reforms themselves are enacted, the group additionally believes that having hashish on the poll may assist elect extra progressive candidates by serving to to spice up turnout from voters who in any other case won’t go to the polls within the upcoming election.
“We’re an electoral group at coronary heart,” Hutson mentioned. “And whereas we love this—I believe it’s an excellent methodology of direct democracy, and actually, there’s a ton of analysis to point that it will increase voter turnout particularly in a midterm yr like 2022—we additionally run candidates alongside these poll initiatives to say, ‘If you happen to care about hashish decriminalization in your metropolis, ensure you additionally vote for these candidates who’re going to assist it.’”
In 2020, WV Can’t Wait supported a gaggle of state legislative candidates that ran on a hashish reform platform.
Progressive organizers in Texas are additionally working to position native marijuana decriminalization initiatives on ballots throughout that state this yr.
In the meantime, in West Virginia, though the governor isn’t personally a fan of marijuana legalization, he mentioned on a pair events final yr that he’d assist the reform if the legislature despatched a invoice to his desk.
Photograph courtesy of Philip Steffan.