On a Thursday in April, Robert deBin pulled up to The Grass Station dispensary in Arkadelphia. The CEO of White Hall cannabis cultivator Natural State Medicinals, deBin watched an elderly man slowly exit a Chevy Silverado with handicap tags and wrestle a wheelchair out of the back. The man helped his wife climb into the chair, but the woman was “clearly struggling,” deBin noticed.
Staff from the dispensary, which does not offer delivery because of what they say are onerous state regulations, lent the woman a hand and helped her into the store. The man didn’t appear to have a medical marijuana card and didn’t enter the store with her, deBin said.
“The whole time I could not stop thinking about how much easier that visit could have been if they had access to a drive-thru or home delivery,” deBin said. “If they were filling a prescription opioid from a pharmacy, they could have done that without getting out of the truck, or even leaving their house.”
Those aren’t just abstract ideas for deBin, but actual possibilities that he helped nearly become a reality this year. As the president of the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association, deBin led the industry’s efforts during the state legislative session earlier this year.
The association advocated for House Bill 1889, which would have permitted dispensaries to install “bank style delivery drawers” to serve qualified patients. During the most treacherous parts of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Asa Hutchinson allowed dispensaries to offer curbside pickup, but the state no longer allows that service.
Medical marijuana delivery isn’t new in The Natural State. Arkansas has allowed it since the industry launched in 2019, but the state requires two dispensary employees to ride in a delivery vehicle. In addition to drive-thru access, the bill under consideration would have reduced that number to one employee if the delivery vehicle was equipped with GPS or a camera.
The bill also would have allowed dispensaries to offer tours to invited guests. Two years ago, the Legislature approved similar tours at cultivation facilities. Bill Paschall, executive director of the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association, said he believes a majority of the state’s legislators have taken advantage of that privilege.
The bill passed each chamber by a razor-thin margin. It passed the House with the minimum 51 votes in favor and it passed the Senate with 19 votes in favor, just one more than the minimum 18 required to pass a bill in the 35-member state Senate.
After moving through both chambers, the bill was on its way to becoming law — or so it seemed.
On April 16, Gov. Sarah Sanders vetoed the bill, one of only four vetoes she doled out for the 2025 legislative session. Sanders’ killing of the bill came as a shock to Republican state Rep. Aaron Pilkington (R-Knoxville), the bill’s lead sponsor.
“I feel like I was totally sucker-punched,” Pilkington told the Arkansas Times the morning after the veto. “The whole time I was running it, I never heard there was any opposition from the governor’s office. I would have gladly worked with them to address any concerns.”
The Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association supported the bill from the start, and deBin said he met with the governor’s staff to discuss the bill and they expressed no concerns.
“At the time, her staff told me they had no position on the bill,” deBin said. “Our specific request was that they stay neutral, and they did not raise any concerns about the content. To their credit, they did say they could not predict what the governor would do if it reached her desk.”
The statement from Sanders that accompanied her veto provided little insight into her rationale.
“This legislation would expand access to usable marijuana, therefore I am vetoing this legislation,” Sanders said. She offered no further explanation.
That evening, the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association said Sanders’ characterization of the bill simply was not true.
“That is not supported by the text of the bill or the intent of its sponsors and supporters,” an industry statement said. “HB1889 did not expand access to medical marijuana. The bill made no changes to patient eligibility, qualifying conditions or who may obtain a medical marijuana card under Arkansas law.”
The archconservative Arkansas Family Council praised Sanders’ decision on its website under the inaccurate headline “Governor vetoes bad bill legalizing marijuana deliveries.” The story said the bill would have legalized deliveries, although deliveries have been legal in Arkansas for more than five years. The group also said the bill would have made it “easier for ‘medical’ marijuana to be moved to the black market or fall into the hands of people who are not authorized to use ‘medical’ marijuana — including children.”
It’s not the first time Sanders and the state medical marijuana industry have been on opposite sides. Last year, the industry supported a constitutional amendment that would have expanded the state medical marijuana program. Stronger Arkansas, a group associated with Sanders, opposed the measure and campaigned against it, even promoting literature that tried to tie the expansion to “communist China.”
The fight over that amendment wound its way to the Arkansas Supreme Court, where Sanders played a pivotal role in killing the medical marijuana measure before the people had a chance to vote on it. Sanders appointed two special state Supreme Court justices who sided with the majority in a ruling that kicked the amendment off the November ballot.
That Supreme Court saga was fresh in mind when deBin met with the governor’s staff.
“That meeting was part of an effort to avoid a repeat of what happened with the 2024 ballot initiative, where the governor appointed two alternate Supreme Court justices who were openly hostile to cannabis and ultimately blocked the campaign,” he said.
The bill deBin pushed in this year’s legislative session illustrated at least one obvious truth: It’s hard to pass a medical marijuana bill in the Arkansas Legislature.
Sen. Josh Bryant (R-Rogers) said the marijuana industry wanted him to sponsor the bill because he’s known as someone more open to cannabis than other legislators. In 2023, he introduced a bill that would have placed a constitutional amendment to legalize recreational marijuana in Arkansas on the 2024 ballot.
Bryant said marijuana bills are among a group of measures that are hard to pass in the state Legislature.
“Any of the sin bills,” he said, referring to anything related to marijuana, alcohol and gambling. Bryant said votes on those topics are usually “pretty tight,” with about a dozen Republicans joining Democrats to pass those measures.
In the Senate, 14 Republicans and five Democrats voted in favor of the bill and one Democrat (Sen. Fred Love of Little Rock) voted against it. In the House, 34 Republicans and 17 Democrats voted for the bill. All of the votes against the bill were cast by Republicans.
Even after Sanders’ veto, there was still a chance the bill could become law. In Arkansas, a governor’s veto can be overridden by a simple majority by the House and the Senate. The bill passed by just enough votes that if all those legislators stuck together, they could override the veto and the bill would become law. But that would require bucking the will of the governor, a politically daunting ask for Arkansas Republicans.
“We got past the House by the skin of our teeth with 51 votes,” Pilkington said. “No way I can keep that coalition together to override a veto.”
Pilkington said he had seen bills with far more support that were unable to override a governor’s veto.
“While I cannot say why the governor vetoed this bill — whether it was due to a misunderstanding of what it actually did, a personal bias against medical cannabis or external political pressure — the result is the same,” deBin said. “Bottom line, this veto directly harmed Arkansans who depend on our medical cannabis program.”