Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill has asked a court to rule in the state’s favor against what he calls “a small group of marijuana enthusiasts operating in Indianapolis under the name ‘First Church of Cannabis.’” An attorney for the church said he was thrilled at Hill’s response to its lawsuit on religious freedom grounds.
Legislators returned to the Indiana Statehouse on Wednesday to begin this year’s General Assembly session, which will be the first in recent memory in which the Republican supermajorities do not have an overarching objective they hope to achieve.
A state senator has filed a bill that would officially legalize the sale and possession of cannabis oil in Indiana.
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb is directing state excise police to resume checking stores for marijuana-derived oils after the state’s attorney general declared them illegal with one limited exception.
Lawmakers such as Rep. Jim Lucas, a Republican, and Sen. Karen Tallian, a Democrat, vocally advocate for their colleagues in the statehouse to support legalizing medicial marijuana. Gov. Eric Holcomb, Attorney General Curtis Hill and the state’s prosecutors oppose such legislation.
Indiana’s county prosecutors remain vehemently opposed to any form of marijuana legalization and insist the plant “is not medicine” amid a push by a conservative state lawmaker to have it recognized as such.