JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — An effort to get a proposal to legalize recreational marijuana in Missouri on the November ballot has collapsed amid the coroanvirus outbreak.
A group called Missourians for a New Approach committee announced Wednesday that it “simply cannot succeed in gathering sufficient signatures” amid restrictions that closed business and forced people to stay home. The group had faced a deadline of May 3 to collect 170,000 signatures.
“We had hoped that it might be possible to persuade the state of Missouri to allow online signature gathering under the extraordinary circumstances we find ourselves in this spring,” the group said in a statement.
“It appears,” the group wrote, “that Missourians are ready to embrace legalization if given the opportunity to vote on it.”
The group has said the recreational marijuana effort is being supported by the same backers who helped pass the medical marijuana constitutional amendment in 2018.
