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Cannabis activists in Nebraska just submitted 15,000 signatures on a petition to create a new political party committed to weed reform.

Mark Elworth Jr. has been working to bring the “Legal Marijuana Now Party” to Nebraska for six years. Elworth submitted a similar petition in 2016, but ended up not having enough valid signatures to succeed. This year, activists collected 15,000 signatures, more than double the 6,800 signatures needed to qualify, which should be enough to ensure that the party is approved. 

The Legal Marijuana Now Party was originally established in Minnesota in the late 1990s and became a ballot-qualified political party in that state last year. This official designation allows the party to coordinate petitions to place pro-cannabis candidates on Minnesota election ballots. Iowa also has its own chapter of the party, which has been on and off the ballot over the past several election cycles.

Elworth told the Lincoln Journal Star that the party is “focusing right now on the legalization of medical marijuana and have been in all 50 states.” 

The fight for medical cannabis is a serious issue for Nebraska, where conservative politicians have managed to shut down every effort to legalize medical pot. After several legalization bills failed in the state legislature, activists managed to get a medical marijuana initiative approved for this year’s election ballot. But a local sheriff filed a legal challenge arguing that the ballot measure covered too many topics, and the state Supreme Court ultimately agreed to kill the measure.

Although Elworth has likely collected enough signatures to get the Legal Marijuana Now Party approved, he submitted the petition too late to qualify for this year. State election officials have promised that the party will be recognized for the 2022 primary election if enough of the signatures are valid, however. 

Because the petition was filed too late, the party will not be able to suggest candidates for the 2020 election. But Elworth believes that the creation of the party will also help convince cannabis advocates not to give up on Nebraska. The activist said that he’s seen many young people posting on social media about how they are thinking about moving out of Nebraska because they are disgusted by the state’s conservative politicians.

“We need to stop that,” Elworth told the Journal Star. “We need to put up a fight. We can’t let our people go. We want to give people hope. They think that this is hopeless.” 

Elworth explained that the party’s end goal is to ensure that Nebraskan cannabis users can have their say in state politics. “We’re marijuana smokers,” he said. “You can imagine what we’re about. We’re really about the lifestyle. Not just marijuana. We’re a whole culture that is not represented, really, by anybody.”

The state is taking steps to ensure true equity in the cannabis space.

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Here’s a sobering reminder of the stupid times we live in: Even if your state has legalized medical marijuana and you are a licensed patient in that region, you can still get busted for possession if you bring your doctor-prescribed medicine onto federally-owned land because cannabis is still (some how) federally illegal.

This is exactly what happened to Nathan Freddy. Last April, Freddy and some friends hiked through Arizona’s Aravaipa Canyon, a highly protected federal park that requires a permit to visit, when a Bureau of Land Management ranger approached him.

When the ranger asked to see the group’s permit, Freddy opened his bag to look for it. The ranger said he noticed the smell of marijuana — which doesn’t justify police searches in many states now — and asked permission to search the rest of Freddy’s belongings. Freddy complied, confident that he had nothing to hide, even as the ranger pulled out a jar of weed, a pipe, a grinder, and a vape pen.

In response, Freddy produced his Arizona-issued medical cannabis card and explained that everything in his possession was covered by a doctor-prescribed treatment for chronic pain. The ranger said that regardless of state regulations, Freddy was just caught with pot on federal land and was being issued a citation for possession.

It’s a serious charge, and prosecutors reportedly offered to drop it if Freddy agreed to pay half the fine. Freddy did not agree. Instead, Freddy is taking his case to court, aiming to fight the foolishness of patchwork pot laws like the one that got him busted.

“I would like to be tried in front of my peers and see what they think,” Freddy told the Phoenix New Times. “I don’t think it’s right to deal with two sets of rules.”

It’s not right, of course, and Freddy is right to fight it. His case is especially relevant in a place like Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal except on federal lands. That double-standard creates a considerable problem, then, as federal lands comprise more than 30 percent of the state’s total territory.

The Arizona US Attorney’s office reportedly responded with no comment beyond a link to a 2018 order from then-Attorney General loser, Jeff Sessions. It’s a charmer of an edict in which the Department of Justice dismissed Obama-era directions that feds should generally respect the cannabis laws set up by individual states.

Worthless, weed-hating Jeff Sessions eventually got fired from the AG office, but the fascist, bullying cruelty and stupidity he inflicted on society continues to run amuck in our present nightmare version of a government.

We need to fire Trump and his entire stinking cabal of anti-marijuana, anti-sanity miscreants this November. Please register to vote now, and let’s all take a step toward rising from the ruins of our once democratic country to create a freer, more just, more compassionate — and absolutely 100-percent weed-legal — America. Make the White House cannabis-friendly again!

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