Group wants people to vote on compromise medical marijuana bill

SALT LAKE CITY – Yet one more battle in the political war in Utah over medical marijuana.  A group of people are asking the Utah Supreme Court to essentially undo the medical marijuana bill which lawmakers approved last week.

One of the petitioners, Steve Maxfield with the group The People’s Right, promised to personally bring a copy of the complaint to the doors of the Supreme Court.  It specifically asks for the Court to rule Governor Gary Herbert violated the constitutionally-protected right of the people, that the Medical Cannabis Act be vacated, and that Proposition 2 be fully restored.

Maxfield says the will of the people should be on equal footing as the legislature, but he believes it isn’t.

“There is no right of the people in this day and age to be co-equal with the legislature,” he says, adding, “If one legislative branch basically eliminated the other legislative branch, we’d have a constitutional crisis, like we have right now.”

Maxfield also wants to put a referendum on the medical marijuana compromise on the 2020 ballot.  However, he says the Lieutenant Governor’s Office rejected his application to have that done.  Maxfield wants that reversed.

“The Supreme Court has ruled that the people are the law-givers and they reserve the right to make those laws themselves,” he says.  “The legislature has been hostile to any citizens’ process.”

If the court does reverse the Lieutenant Governor’s decision, they’ll have 40 days to gather 114 thousand signatures.