Local Marijuana Petition Surpasses Sanctuary City Signature Count

LUBBOCK, TEXAS - Freedom Act Lubbock, the local petition initiative to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana within city limits, has already surpassed the amount of signatures collected during the entirety of the campaign that put the Sanctuary City for the Unborn ordinance on the ballot for Lubbock citizens to vote on, and organizers still have one more week left to collect them.

“We are extremely proud of all of the volunteers on our team, and everyone else who is helping us collect signatures.” said Adam Hernandez, Communications Chair for Lubbock Compact, the organization that initiated the petition process, “We still have one week left before we have to turn them in, and we already have about 8,800. We plan to turn in about 10,000 signatures on the deadline.”

The required number of signatures needed for the Freedom Act Lubbock petition according to city rules is 4,800, which are due on October 17th, 2023. By comparison, the Sanctuary City for the Unborn petition needed to collect 3,651 signatures, with the organizers of that initiative turning in a total of 5,780 at the end of their campaign. The city charter allows 60 days for collecting signatures for any petition initiative. Data from the signature collection process for Freedom Act Lubbock shows widespread support across the city, including a large percentage of signatures from registered voters who normally don’t show up to vote in most election cycles.

“We also have a heat map that shows where in the city our signatures are coming from,” Hernandez says, “and it shows that people in every part of the city support this measure.”

They added that they will continue to collect signatures.

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