West Virginia activists are pursuing a pair of local marijuana decriminalization initiatives for the November ballot, including in the state capital of Charleston.
While the progressive organization West Virginia Can’t Wait typically works on electoral politics by supporting candidates who embrace policies that align with its mission, the group’s field director Sarah Hutson told Marijuana Moment in a phone interview that the group “became aware of, in the past year or so, this option to run municipal ballot measures within the state of West Virginia.”
So activists have turned their attention to cannabis reform, crafting and qualifying petitions to place decriminalization initiatives on local ballots in Charleston and Fairmont for the November election.
The initiatives wouldn’t fully remove marijuana bans from city statutes. It would still be considered a misdemeanor offense to possess limited amounts of cannabis, but there would be “no fees for it, no jail time and no court fees.”
The plan is to turn in signatures by mid-July for the first two target cities, Hutson said, though she added that organizers may work to qualify cannabis measures in additional West Virginia municipalities in future elections.
“The response has been great,” she said. “The average, I think, is
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