West Virginia activists are pursuing a pair of grassroots marijuana decriminalization initiatives for the November ballot, including in the state capital of Charleston.

While the progressive West Virginia organization Can’t Wait generally works on electoral politics supporting candidates who adopt policies consistent with its mission, the group’s field director Sarah Hutson told Marijuana Moment during a telephone interview that the group “became aware, in the last year or so, of this option to organize municipal ballot measures in the state of West Virginia.

Activists have therefore turned their attention to cannabis reform, crafting and qualifying petitions to place decriminalization initiatives on local ballots in Charleston and Fairmont for the November elections.

The initiatives would not completely remove marijuana bans from municipal statutes. Possession of limited amounts of cannabis would still be considered a misdemeanor, but there would be “no charge for it, no jail time and no court costs”.

The plan is to turn in signatures by mid-July for the first two target cities, Hutson said, though she added that organizers could work to qualify cannabis measures in other Virginia municipalities. -Western in the next elections.

“The response has been great,” she said. “The average, I think, is if you ask 50 people to sign, 49 will say yes. And one person out of those 50 might say no.

The campaign has garnered over 1,000 signatures in Charleston so far, meaning they are halfway through qualifying.

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They just started collecting signatures at Fairmont, where the petitions were approved about two weeks ago. In terms of volunteers, Hutson said they have about 20 to 30 working in Charleston and 10 in Fairmont.

“We collect signatures that we can rely on. It’s just a matter of how many people you have there to pick them up, because people are so excited about this and really interested in seeing cannabis decriminalized,” she said. “The current government in West Virginia doesn’t reflect the overwhelming will of the people that people shouldn’t go to jail for possessing cannabis, so it’s really amazing and easy to collect signatures.

The proposal West Virginia Can’t Wait for is partly informed by the decriminalization measures that have been put to Ohio voters in past local elections, and the campaign has benefited from the help of the Sensible Movement Coalition ( SMC) based in Ohio in drafting language and dealing with legal complications.

SMC attempted to branch out from Ohio and pass local decriminalization initiatives in four nearby West Virginia towns last year: Clarksburg, McMechen, Salem and Wheeling, but those efforts were unsuccessful. . In 2019, voters in Salem rejected a similar reform proposal in a ballot that SMC’s West Virginia affiliate led.

West Virginia Can’t Wait believes that, based on their early results, things will play out differently in the key cities they are focusing on this cycle.

As well as hoping for the marijuana reforms themselves to be enacted, the group also believe that having cannabis on ballots could help elect more progressive candidates by helping to increase voter turnout. voters who otherwise might not turn out to vote in the next election.

“We are an electoral organization at heart,” Hutson said. “And while we love that – I think it’s a great method of direct democracy, and really, there’s a ton of research to indicate that it increases voter turnout, especially in a midterm year like 2022 – we’re also running candidates alongside these ballot initiatives to say, “If you care about decriminalizing cannabis in your city, be sure to also vote for these candidates who are going to support it.”

In 2020, WV Can’t Wait supported a group of state legislative candidates who ran on a cannabis reform platform.

Progressive organizers in Texas are also working to put local marijuana decriminalization initiatives on that state’s ballots this year.

Meanwhile, in West Virginia, although the governor is not personally a fan of marijuana legalization, he has repeatedly said last year that he would support reform if the legislature sends a bill. at her office.

Majority of Black Americans support legalizing marijuana, freeing cannabis prisoners and expunging records, poll finds

Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.