A Nebraska Senator drives Legalisation in his state

A state senator introduced a proposed amendment to the Nebraska Constitution on Thursday that would legalize marijuana for adults 21 and older. If the Nebraska Legislature adopts Omaha Senator Justin Wayne's proposed amendment, it would appear on the ballot in 2022. Under Legislative Resolution 2CA, voters would vote on a proposed amendment to the state constitution in the general election next November. The change would legalize marijuana for all adults aged 21 and over and oblige lawmakers to pass a law by October 1, 2023 regulating the "cultivation, manufacture, distribution, use and sale of cannabis in all forms" . The proposed change comes after an unsuccessful attempt by activists to legalize medical marijuana through the Nebraska Medical Cannabis Constitutional Amendment (NMCCA) last year. Proponents of the measure submitted more than 182,000 signatures in July, and the following month, Nebraska's Secretary of State Bob Evnen announced that the measure had garnered enough signatures to qualify for a vote and certified the initiative for the November universal ballot 2020. However, that decision was challenged by Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner, who filed a lawsuit to block the initiative from appearing on the ballot on the grounds that it contained misleading language and violated a rule called Initiatives limited to one topic. The challenge was upheld by a 5-2 vote by the Nebraska Supreme Court, which ruled that regulations covering retail sales, home growing and other issues were insufficiently linked to legalizing the medicinal use of cannabis. "If voters are to intelligently adopt government policies on the medicinal use of cannabis, they must first be allowed to decide this issue alone, unencumbered by other issues," the court wrote in its conclusion. "As suggested, the NMCCA contains more than one topic - by our count it contains at least eight topics." "We are overturning the Secretary of State's decision and giving him a mandamus instructing him to withhold the initiative from the November 2020 general election," the statement said.