A conservative Arkansas group seeking to prevent the state from becoming the first in the U.S. South to allow medical marijuana filed a lawsuit on Friday to knock a pot-as-medicine proposal off the November election ballot.
The lawsuit filed in the state Supreme Court by the Coalition to Preserve Arkansas Values argues the ballot's title, the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act, is misleading and the act itself hard to understand at 8,000 words long.
"By introducing more addictive substances into society, it is a family values issue," said Jerry Cox, president of the Family Council Action Committee of Arkansas, part of the coalition seeking to block the measure.
The move illustrates the deep misgivings about medical cannabis in the country's traditionally more conservative South, even as 17 other states mostly in the Northeast and West allow the drug for medical purposes. California voters first took that step in 1996.
The battle over medical pot in Arkansas comes as voters in Washington state, Colorado and Oregon are set to decide in November on whether to legalize recreational use of the drug. Massachusetts will also have a medical pot ballot measure.
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