When the People Speak Even the Mormon Church Listens

 

How the Mormon church unlocked medical pot for deep red states

“They did everything that they could to fight this until the people had spoken," a former state lawmaker said of the church.

POLITICO - SALT LAKE CITY — On a Thursday in October 2018, a handful of Utah’s top lawmakers, representatives from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and medical marijuana advocates filed into the Gold Room, an ornate space in the state Capitol.

They were joined by the Utah Medical Association and law enforcement groups to announce a deal to legalize medical marijuana across the state.

Everyone was there in large part because the church had decided they would be.

“You could just almost hear the teeth grinding of the law enforcement — and some of the other people that were sitting there — having to play nice and say 'Oh yeah … this is all kumbaya.' Because, it wasn't,” said former Republican Utah state Sen. Mark Madsen, who worked to pass medical marijuana legislation. “The church made that happen.”

Despite the national popularity of legalizing marijuana, 14 states — mostly in the Deep South and the Great Plains — have not embraced it for medical use. Triangulating around growing support and nudged along by the personal touch of its members, the Mormon church helped greenlight a medical marijuana program industry advocates may use to succeed in deeply conservatives places like Idaho or Kansas.

Marijuana proponents knocked down several barriers to the industry this year, opening New York and Virginia to full legalization — and even legalized medical cannabis in more conservative states like Alabama. Most of the remaining states lack a ballot initiative process, and have influential groups staunchly opposed to medical marijuana legalization.

“Some of the legislators who are opposed to medical marijuana are opposed based on concerns that it somehow will lead to legalization,” said Karen O’Keefe, director of state policy at the Marijuana Policy Project, a national pro-cannabis advocacy group focused on state legislatures and ballot initiatives. “[Utah is] a good example of a state that has a medical program that's limited, where there's not any eye to adult-use legalization, and where there was actually active involvement from the medical society in working out the details of the program.”

Utah’s road to medical marijuana legalization ran directly through the Latter-day Saints. Members of the Mormon faith make up 60 percent of the state’s population as of 2020, and nearly 90 percent of the state Legislature, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. The church’s influence over policy is so strong that traditional bars were not legal in Utah until 2003. Some foreign delegations even imported their own beer to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

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