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LINCOLN — The decade-long fight to secure a safe, regulated medical cannabis system in Nebraska could hinge on whether state lawmakers adopt legislation this spring to help implement the ballot measures.
Senators and advocates for medical cannabis urged the Legislature’s General Affairs Committee to take action this year, before the laws take full effect by Oct. 1. The Monday push came one day after the urging of Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers and U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., to delay any legislative action in an op-ed published Sunday in the Omaha World-Herald.
Nebraska voters overwhelmingly approved legalizing medical cannabis in November to the tune of more than 71%, passing in all of the state’s 49 legislative districts.
A second measure, to set up a regulatory scheme through a new Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission, structured similarly to and including the three members of the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission, passed with 67% support statewide, winning majority support in 46 of 49 legislative districts.
“The bottom line is the people have spoken: They want safe, legal access to medical cannabis,” said State Sen. Ben Hansen of Blair, who is sponsoring a related bill. “It is our turn to act responsibly, establish clear and reasonable regulations and give the Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission the tools it needs to oversee this industry safely and effectively.”
Hansen said failing to do so would be “reckless and a direct disregard for the will of the people.”
“We don’t want the Wild West,” he testified Monday.
Medical cannabis advocates centered their push in favor of Hansen’s Legislative Bill 677 and LB 651 from State Sen. Danielle Conrad of Lincoln, two largely similar bills with a few key differences.
Testifiers also pushed back on LB 483 from freshman State Sen. Jared Storm of David City, which would limit permissible cannabis forms to pills and liquid tinctures and reduce legalized cannabis from 5 ounces per person with a health care practitioner’s written recommendation to 300 milligrams.
That would be 0.21% of the voterapproved amount.
The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services opposed the Hansen and Conrad bills, as did the Attorney General’s office. DHHS supported Storm’s bill while the AG’s Office took no position.
“I think that we slow walk it and we get this right, because if we get it wrong, you let the genie out of the bottle, you’re not getting it back in,” Storm said.
The Hansen and Conrad bills would delay the start of licensing marijuana establishments from Oct. 1 to after Jan. 1 in the new year. That’s largely because the new commission — with no budget and no additional staff — is struggling in crafting the required regulations detailed in the ballot measures.
Hobert Rupe, executive director of the Liquor Control Commission, whose members are to oversee implementation of related regulations by July 1, said the current timeline isn’t working.
Constitutional constraints limit ballot measures from appropriating funds and expansively detailing regulations, multiple testifiers said.
Rupe said the result is “absolutely no way to do this job.”
Some impacts, he explained, are that the new cannabis commissioners have no funds to pay for a public notice to host a meeting on the regulations and also have no additional law enforcement to stand up the program.
Whether legislation passes this spring, Rupe noted the new state agency would need to find its place in the state budget.
“I always look at this, they [voters] gave us the cinder blocks,” Rupe testified, speaking neutrally about the legislation. “You guys have to do the mortar to put the cinder blocks together.”
