Missouri voters could decide on medical marijuana next year. One group in support of medical marijuana, New Approach Missouri, filed petitions with the Missouri secretary of state's office Thursday for a measure to legalize cannabis for medical purposes.

Alaska

Qualifying conditions to become a medical marijuana patient in Alaska include:

• Cancer
• Glaucoma
• HIV/AIDS
• Cachexia (wasting syndrome)
• Nausea
• Muscle spasms
• Multiple sclerosis
• Pain
• Seizures

For a complete list of qualifying conditions and guidelines, please refer to Alaska’s application for medical marijuana registry

Arizona

Qualifying conditions to become a medical marijuana patient in Arizona include:

COLUMBIA — Initiative petitions have begun circulating that would revive a proposal for the decriminalization of growing up to six marijuana plants in Columbia.

The petition would limit cultivation to a person's home in locked area indoors inaccessible to children. It would make cultivation a municipal offense with a fine of $250 or community service or counseling. The petition also states that medical marijuana may be obtained, possessed and cultivated by seriously ill patients.

JEFFERSON CITY - A Missouri marijuana campaign committee recently hired a top political consultant with hopes of getting the medical marijuana initiative petition on the 2016 ballot.

Jack Cardetti will now be working with New Approach Missouri, the political action committee for Show-Me Cannabis.

Dan Viets, chairman for Show-Me Cannabis, said Cardetti's hiring may be the necessary tool for finally getting the initiative for medical marijuana on the ballot. Viets said Cardetti brings much more than just his name.

"We hope of course not only that he'll increase the credibility of our campaign, but that in turn will lead to substantial contribution," Viets said. "Money is the mother's milk of politics after all."

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) _ Supporters of medical marijuana in Missouri have hired a prominent political consultant to help with a campaign to put a proposal on the 2016 ballot.

New Approach Missouri’s new consultant Jack Cardetti met this week with marijuana advocates at an event at Busch Stadium.

Cardetti worked on Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon and Secretary of State Jason Kander’s campaigns.

Cardetti says New Approach Missouri plans to hire people to collect enough voter signatures to get the medical marijuana proposal on next year’s ballot.

Medical and recreational marijuana proposals failed in 2012 and 2014 to collect enough signatures.

A man sentenced to life without parole on a marijuana-related charge was freed Tuesday from a Missouri prison after being behind bars for more than two decades — a period in which the nation’s attitudes toward pot steadily softened.

Family, friends, supporters and reporters flocked to meet Jeff Mizanskey as he stepped out of the Jefferson City Correctional Center into a sunny morning, wearing a new pair of white tennis shoes and a shirt that read “I’m Jeff & I’m free.”

“I spent a third of my life in prison,” said Mizanskey, now 62, who was greeted by his infant great-granddaughter. “It’s a shame.”

At least 67 people are in prison right now, sentenced to die there for selling marijuana, according to the best available data. Until last week, Jeff Mizanskey was one of them. 

“Man, I feel great,” the great-grandfather told MSNBC, as he contemplated his first weekend as a free man in more than 20 years. His sentence was commuted in May from life without parole to simple life, and on Tuesday he walked out of a maximum security Missouri prison.

Someone helped him dial this wondrous new thing called a smart phone. “Do you have children?” he asked. “The day a child is born – that’s what this feels like for me. I’ve finally made it to freedom.”

An exclusive interview with John Payne, executive director of Missouri’s Show-Me Cannabis policy-reform organization.

by Noelle Skodzinski

In November 2014, Missouri cannabis-policy-reform organization Show-Me Cannabis(named after Missouri’s nickname as The Show-Me State)  filed a petition with the Missouri Secretary of State to amend the state constitution to legalize, tax and regulate cannabis. The petition was required to undergo a review and public comment period, according to the Show-Me Cannabis website, before signatures could begin to be collected.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A new constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to farm doesn't protect a woman who reportedly grew marijuana in her home, a Missouri judge ruled this week.

Cole County Circuit Judge Dan Green ruled against a woman Tuesday whose public defender tried to argue that cultivating marijuana falls under the farming-rights amendment, the Jefferson City News Tribune reported.

Public defender Justin Carver argued that Green should set aside a grand jury indictment against Lisa A. Loesch. She was charged in 2012 after Jefferson City police arrested her for allegedly growing pot in her basement.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A man sentenced to life in prison without parole on a marijuana-related charge was freed Tuesday from a Missouri prison after being behind bars for two decades — a period in which the nation’s attitudes toward pot have steadily softened.

Family, friends, supporters and reporters flocked to meet Jeff Mizanskey as he stepped out of the Jefferson City Correctional Center into a sunny morning, wearing a new pair of white tennis shoes and a shirt that read “I’m Jeff & I’m free.”

“I spent a third of my life in prison,” said Mizanskey, now 62, who was greeted by his infant great-granddaughter. “It’s a shame.”