Oklahomans for Health, a non-profit organization dedicated to making medical marijuana legal in the state, will address city councilors Thursday night at the weekly council meeting.
The group also plans to file public information requests with the Tulsa Police Department over what it calls incidents of harassment by police officers against petitioners hold signs and gathering signatures in the city. [See related story]
The group hopes to gather the nearly 156,000 signatures required to get medical marijuana on the November ballot so voters can decide the issue.
Organizer Chip Paul tells KRMG the police have stopped bothering the petitioners, but OFH still wants to know why it happened at all.
They’d like to find out if officers took it upon themselves to try and run petitioners off, or if the orders came from higher up.
And, Paul says, the councilors need to know there’s potential liability for the city if such harassment occurs in the future.
Tulsa police tell KRMG their policy is to always support people’s First Amendment rights, as long as no laws are being broken.
Still, KRMG did obtain video of officers telling petitioners they had to have permits to hold signs, which is not true (see below).
Meanwhile, OFH plans to step up its petition drive, setting up a traveling petition site which they say will be in “tent revival style.”
“We want to be sure we give every Oklahoman the opportunity to sign the petition. We thought the old time tent revival would be a fun approach. We will be travelling around the state and times and locations will be posted on our website and at www.legalizeok.org. We will be gathering signatures and signature pages while we are on the road,” Paul said in an email to KRMG.
Medical marijuana backers plan to address Tulsa city council
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