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MARIJUANA MOMENT
MONTANA LAWMAKERS FAIL TO OVERRIDE GOVERNOR’S VETO OF MARIJUANA REVENUE
DISTRIBUTION BILL
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POLITICS
MONTANA LAWMAKERS FAIL TO OVERRIDE GOVERNOR’S VETO OF MARIJUANA REVENUE
DISTRIBUTION BILL
Published
8 hours ago
on
April 22, 2024
By
Marijuana Moment
“Legislators also made clear that we should continue using marijuana revenue to
fund addiction and recovery services, law enforcement, veterans, wildlife
habitat and state parks and trails.”
By Blair Miller, Daily Montanan
Nearly a year after Gov. Greg Gianforte vetoed (R) a widely supported,
bipartisan bill to redistribute Montana’s marijuana revenue and send millions to
fund county road projects just as the Senate adjourned for the session, the veto
will stand.
Young Americans Are Five Times More Likely To Smoke Marijuana Than Cigarettes
Young Americans Are Five Times More Likely To Smoke Marijuana Than Cigarettes
New polling data from Gallup indicates that a significantly higher number of
Americans now report using marijuana compared to cigarettes. Moreover, young
adults are over five times more likely to consume cannabis than tobacco.
Overall, 17% of Americans report smoking marijuana, while only 12% reported
smoking any cigarettes in the past week. This disparity is particularly notable
among younger age groups. Among those aged 18-34, 26% reported using cannabis,
compared to just 5% who reported smoking cigarettes. For adults aged 35-54, 18%
reported marijuana use, which is higher than the 16% who smoke cigarettes.
However, among adults aged 55 and older, the prevalence of cigarette smoking in
the past week (13%) slightly exceeds that of marijuana use (11%). The survey
question on marijuana use focused on "smoking" the substance, potentially
overlooking other forms of cannabis consumption like edibles and vapes.
“Americans’ reported marijuana smoking has more than doubled since 2013, when
Gallup first added the question in its annual Consumption Habits survey,” the
polling firm said. Support for marijuana legalization has also reached a record
high, with 70% of Americans expressing approval of the policy change.
Conversely, rates of cigarette smoking have declined to historic lows amid
increased awareness of the health risks associated with tobacco. Additionally,
Gallup's separate survey from last year found that Americans perceive marijuana
to be less harmful than alcohol, cigarettes, vapes, and other tobacco products.
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Here Is Who Cannabis Users Will Vote for in the 2024 Presidential Election
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Lawmakers failed to override the veto of Senate Bill 442, according to polling
results released Friday afternoon by the Secretary of State’s Office. Just 24
senators and 41 representatives voted in favor of overriding the veto, which
needed the support of two-thirds of both chambers in order to pass, and 68
lawmakers did not cast a ballot.
Though the bill received approval from 130 of 150 lawmakers in the legislature,
led by a Republican supermajority, upon its final passage last May, the result
was not unexpected, as most Republicans revolted in March and said they would
not participate in the poll because leadership believes the Montana Supreme
Court wrongfully stepped in and ordered the poll to be conducted.
The Secretary of State’s Office said Friday it received ballot packets back in
which lawmakers said they refused to participate, while other packets were not
claimed by lawmakers at all.
But the result marks a disappointment for Sen. Mike Lang (R-Malta), who is
retiring, and for counties and conservation groups who had helped craft the
bill, draw widespread support across various industries in Montana and then
successfully challenged Gianforte’s veto of the measure in court to force the
override poll.
The group—the Montana Association of Counties, Wild Montana and the Montana
Wildlife Federation—said after the results came down Friday that they would
bring the bill back during the 2025 session and press lawmakers who supported
the measure last year to support next year’s version.
“Despite broad bipartisan support in the 2023 Legislature, politics became the
enemy of good, homegrown policy. Our coalition of hunters, anglers, ranchers,
county commissioners, veterans and Montanans across the state remains united and
committed to address these pressing issues,” Montana Wildlife Federation
Executive Director Frank Szollosi said in a statement.
“We look forward to working with the multitude of legislators who have claimed
they will eagerly support the policy in 2025, even if they refused to support
the override,” said Noah Marion, the political and state policy director for
Wild Montana. “The governor’s unconstitutional actions and the cynical political
gamesmanship by his allies was the only chance he had to stand in the way of
such a broadly supported bill, but the Court has been clear that cannot happen
again.”
Lang did not respond to a phone call seeking comment Friday but voted in favor
of the override.
The failure to override Gianforte’s veto means the current structure for where
Montana’s marijuana revenue goes will stay the same as it has for the past two
years. It also means that counties will not get hundreds of thousands of dollars
to put toward county road construction and maintenance they would not have had
otherwise — even in counties that don’t allow for recreational marijuana sales.
“I applaud the Montana Legislature for today rejecting radical judicial
overreach, as the court sought to meddle in the legislative process,” Gianforte
said in a statement. “Legislators also made clear that we should continue using
marijuana revenue to fund addiction and recovery services, law enforcement,
veterans, wildlife habitat and state parks and trails, just as Montanans
intended when they voted for recreational marijuana at the ballot box in 2020.”
Democratic leadership, who supported the bill last session, blamed Republicans
for killing a bipartisan bill that many of them supported.
“Today, Republicans chose party loyalty over supporting veterans, public lands,
and rural roads. These issues unite Montanans across party lines, and SB
442—which deserves to be law today—showed that we are still able to do good work
for Montana,” House Minority leader Kim Abbott (D-Helena) and Senate Minority
Leader Pat Flowers (D-Belgrade) said in a joint statement. “Unfortunately, when
it came time to stand with Montanans, too many Republicans buckled under
pressure from the governor. These games are exactly what Montanans hate about
politics.”
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Supreme Court appeal continues
While the 2023 version of SB 442 is dead, the question of whether Gianforte’s
veto was done properly or whether the override poll should have been sent out in
the first place remains an ongoing issue, as Gianforte and Secretary of State
Christi Jacobsen have both appealed the district court decision that said
lawmakers have to have a way to override a governor’s veto to the Montana
Supreme Court.
The court will have to decide what “in session” means when it comes to the
legislature and whether one chamber being adjourned means the legislature is not
technically “in session.”
That is because MACo and the two conservation groups sued last year when
Gianforte vetoed the bill in the hour before the Senate adjourned, but said the
timing and circumstances of the veto meant legislators had no opportunity to
override it.
The groups said the veto message was not read aloud in the Senate before
senators voted to end their work for the session last May 2 and that it was,
according to statute, not done when the full legislature was still “in session.”
Republican leadership saw the quick adjournment, instigated by Senate Minority
Leader Pat Flowers (D-Belgrade), but approved by a handful of Republicans
supportive of SB 442, as an affront to their efforts to finish up work on a
handful of other bills, and held onto the bill.
Gianforte and Jacobsen maintained that they did not have the bill and could not
initiate the override poll process, and contended the legislature was indeed in
session when the veto occurred because the House was still in session and the
veto message was read aloud there.
But after hearing arguments from MACo, the conservation groups, and the
government in December, Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Mike Menahan
sided with the groups, ordering the override poll to be sent out and saying
Gianforte and Jacobsen had “interrupted the political process in an
impermissible way.”
But Gianforte and Jacobsen appealed the decision and asked it be put on pause
pending the appeal. That request was denied, and the Supreme Court on March 15
ordered Jacobsen to send the override poll out by the end of the day on March
19.
Republicans’ campaign to not participate appears effective
But the day before that was set to happen, 27 out of the 36 Republicans in the
Senate sent a letter to the Supreme Court saying they believed the judicial
branch was stepping on the toes of the legislative and executive branches by
ordering the poll to proceed. House Republican leadership did the same.
“The legislature will not participate in an unconstitutional poll,” the Senate’s
letter said.
They wrote a similar letter to Gianforte and Jacobsen. When Jacobsen eventually
did send the poll out the next day, she included comments saying she agreed with
some of their points.
“To my knowledge, the Secretary of State has never polled members of the
legislature on a bill returned to the legislative branch during session, before
or after statehood, until now,” she wrote. “Nor has the Secretary of State ever
conducted a veto poll prior to the receipt of the bill. Finally, having the
legitimacy of the poll itself weighed and potentially invalidated at any time is
certainly unusual.”
The pressure campaign seems to have been effective. Just 12 House Republicans
and nine Senate Republicans voted in favor of the override, and most did not
vote at all. Only one Democrat, Sen. Kathy Kelker of Billings, voted against the
override.
Senate President Jason Ellsworth (R-Hamilton) said in a statement the poll
results are “exactly as expected.”
“A majority of the Senate told the judicial and executive branches that we would
not recognize it as legitimate, and that’s exactly what happened,” he said in a
written statement. “Constitutional processes must be followed regardless of the
policy merits of any piece of legislation.”
Jason Rittal, the deputy director of the Montana Association of Counties, said
Friday the circumstances surrounding what happened with the bill and the veto
should leave Montanans concerned.
“The District Court serves as a critical check in our system, ensuring that
loopholes resulting in unconstitutional actions are not allowed. By closing one
of these loopholes, the court did its job and provided the Legislature their
opportunity to override,” he said in a statement. “Some legislators do not agree
with the court’s involvement and subsequent decision, which is their
prerogative. However, SB 442 is good policy that would have benefitted Montana
far and wide, and when the 2025 session arrives, county commissioners throughout
the state will again rally in support of another SB 442.”
This story was first published by Daily Montanan.
> Congressional Progressive Caucus Says Democrats Can Legalize Marijuana If They
> Win House And Senate Majorities In November Election
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