In Indiana, marijuana is a lot like cursive writing.
Almost every year, some poor soul in the state legislature goes to the trouble of putting forth a measure that would require schools to teach cursive, even though technology has blasted its relevancy back to the 20th century. We may as well mandate VCR repair.
The bill fails every year. It’s one of the general assembly’s many pet projects and lost causes. And marijuana stands right beside it.
As scores of surrounding states legalize weed, several lawmakers over several years have tried to greenlight cannabis in Indiana in some form or another. Multiple bills are wafting through the general assembly this year, too, including a measure from Sen. Vanessa Summers (D-Indianapolis) that would legalize marijuana in all forms, set up dispensaries, and allow anyone previously sentenced to a weed-related crime to seek a sentence modification.
It sounds great to me. And I have zero doubt it will fail miserably.
Even though polls show overwhelming support for legalization among multiple demographics and political persuasions, both the majority of Indiana lawmakers and Gov. Eric Holcomb have spent years refusing to consider it.
“I don't have a luxury of picking and choosing which laws to legalize at the state level while they are illegal at the federal level,” Holcomb said in October.
But there may be ways around Holcomb and lawmakers. One is fairly simple, and one is extremely complex.
Extremely complex
Let’s start with the latter. Dan Orenstein, a professor at the Robert H. McKinney School of Law at IUPUI, mentioned it to the Indianapolis Star back in November.
More: 36 states now have some form of legal weed. Here's why Indiana is unlikely to join them
He said one of the biggest barriers to legalization is Indiana’s lack of a statewide ballot initiative -- the process in which a potential state law can be decided not by lawmakers, but the voters themselves.
Just last year, four states – Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota – used ballot initiatives to ratify recreational weed. South Dakota OK’d medicinal marijuana through a vote, as did Mississippi. (That’s right. Mississippi – a state that had the Confederate battle symbol on its state flag until last year – has more progressive marijuana laws than Indiana.)
Of the 16 states that have legalized recreational cannabis, 14 have done it through their voters.
But Indiana doesn’t allow ballot initiatives. And shoehorning them into the law would take several years and some major political luck.
Orenstein detailed the process for me last week. Since the Indiana constitution dictates that all laws must be passed by the general assembly, the addition of a ballot initiative would have to come in the form of a constitutional amendment, he said.
To create an amendment, an initiative has to pass the majority of two legislatures with an election in between, allowing two separate general assemblies to consider its merits. After all that, it still has to go to the voters in the form of a “public question” – or, ironically in this case, a kind of ballot initiative. It took three years for the recent “balanced budget amendment” to follow that path.
An amendment adding ballot initiatives to the constitution could take even longer – especially if the effort is explicitly hyped as a Trojan horse for marijuana legalization.
“There are a number of positive and negative aspects to initiatives, but framing the issue primarily as a vehicle for legalization is probably a nonstarter in the state legislature,” Orenstein said. “If a majority of the legislature supported legalization, it would be much simpler to vote on ... as a normal bill without having to wade into issues of changing the state constitution more broadly.”
Fairly simple
Even if some ambitious lawmaker managed to amend the constitution, weed legalization would still have another hurdle to clear.
States with ballot initiatives require a certain number of signatures before a question can land at the feet of voters. In Illinois, for instance, the required amount is 8 percent of the number of people who voted in the last gubernatorial election.
If Indiana followed that same standard, a weed referendum would need about 242,000 signatures. That shouldn’t be too big of a problem. You could nab at least 10,000 barely legible names by waltzing into the Indianapolis 500 snake pit and yelling "who likes weed?"
But here’s where the comparatively easier option comes in.
Back in December, the U.S. House passed a bill that would have legalized marijuana nationwide. It didn't get a vote in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has blocked most marijuana legislation despite some GOP support for legalization.
With Democrats set to take over control of the Senate, House and White House this week, though, a revamped effort might meet a different fate. The CEO of Aphria, a pharmaceutical company that specializes in cannabis, has already said he expects it to happen.
Of course marijuana legalization is no guarantee, no matter how many majorities Democrats cling to. Anything from hesitant lawmakers to robust anti-weed lobbying could derail it in a second.
Then there’s President-elect Joe Biden, who has said the idea of legalizing recreational cannabis should be left up to the states. But a bill carrying enough bipartisan support could change Biden’s mind and push him toward signing legal weed into law.
And luckily for legalization supporters, he has a pretty strong grasp on cursive writing.