A ruling Wednesday from a Pulaski County Circuit Court judge voided 27 laws regulating medical marijuana in Arkansas, saying the General Assembly unconstitutionally overstepped its bounds when it passed legislation changing the amendment that legalized the drug.
Laws that regulated how much THC — the drug’s psychoactive compound — can be in medical marijuana edibles, how dispensaries and cultivators can advertise their products, and how the state collects taxes on medical marijuana are now “void” and “unconstitutional,” according to the ruling by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Morgan “Chip” Welch.
In his order overturning more than two dozen laws the General Assembly passed in the 2017, 2019 and 2021 legislative sessions, Welch ruled lawmakers violated their constitutional restraints by effectively changing Amendment 98 to the Arkansas Constitution, which legalized medical marijuana, without referring their changes to the people.
The plaintiffs — Good Day Farm Arkansas, LLC, a Pine Bluff cultivator, and Capital City Medicinal, LLC, a Little Rock dispensary — sued the state in 2022, saying the Legislature went around the constitutional amendment process and instead passed constitutional changes as if they were regular laws.
Erika Gee, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in an email, “We appreciate the Court’s ruling but won’t have any further comment.”
The state argued that a section of the medical marijuana amendment gave the General Assembly the power to pass laws…