The road to legalizing medical cannabis in Nebraska has been a long one, with advocates hoping yet again that they will be able to place medical cannabis on the upcoming 2024 ballot. Should they succeed, a new poll suggests that Nebraska voters would approve it if they are given the opportunity to finally vote on the issue.
According to a poll conducted by Neilan Strategy Group surveying registered Nebraska voters, 70% of respondents said they approve of legalizing medical cannabis, the Nebraska Examiner reports.
The recent poll is consistent with past data, consistently revealing that a majority of Nebraska residents support legal medical cannabis in their state. A 2022 survey conducted by the University of Nebraska- Lincoln found that 83% of Nebraskans supported medical cannabis legalization. Similarly, a 2022 poll conducted by Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana (NMM), the advocacy group pushing to get the issue onto the ballot, found that 80% of polled voters support medical cannabis legalization.
NMM Campaign Manager Crista Eggers said that she was not surprised “whatsoever” by the results saying, “Nebraskans are obviously ready to legalize medicinal cannabis.”
The group is attempting to get the issue onto the state ballot for the third time this year. In 2020, the group secured enough signatures to put the issue onto the ballot, though the Nebraska Supreme Court disqualified it because it ruled the language violated the constitutional requirement that ballot initiatives must be limited to a single subject. In 2022, NMM was unable to gather enough signatures following the death of a major financial backer of the petition drive.
The current effort has NMM circulating two petitions, including the Patient Protection Act (which would protect patients using medical cannabis from prosecution) and the Medical Cannabis Regulation Act (which would implement a commission to manage a state program and develop a regulatory framework).
In order to make the ballot, an initiative looking to change the law must gather signatures from about 86,000 registered voters, with signers from at least 5% of voters for 38 of Nebraska’s 93 total counties.
As of Monday, Eggers reported that NMM had gathered more than 32,000 signatures and that it’s likely reached the 5% threshold in 24 counties so far, “much farther ahead” than NMM was the two previous times, she said.
“We’re very excited about where we’re at,” she said. “This time, we’re going to get it done or it is not going to happen.”
NMM officially launched the new campaign on Sept. 13, 2023, with Eggers at the forefront—as she has been with previous attempts. She has been vocal about her own story and that of her son, who has suffered from epileptic seizures since he was 2 years old. Eggers has since found that cannabis is the best treatment and has advocated for all of the others in the state who would benefit from access to medicinal cannabis.
“I do know that day will come when I get to tell [my son] and that he will understand that by sharing something that’s very personal and very painful, he helped make a change. Someday there will be a parent that I get to talk to and they won’t have had to fight this battle,” Eggers told the Nebraska Examiner last year. “It will be worth it for that one parent that does not face what so many of us face.”
NMM has been up against key Nebraskan legislators, including Gov. Jim Pillen (R), who have vocally opposed the reform. Pillen said in September 2023 that medical cannabis “poses demonstrated harms to our children” and that “access to medical marijuana should only happen if it has undergone the FDA-approved process.”
In 2021, Sen. Pete Ricketts (R) said, “If you legalize marijuana, you’re going to kill your kids.” Eggers replied, “I know what is killing my child, and that is having horrific seizures daily for the last five, six years.”
