An effort in the House to ban edible forms of medical marijuana failed today. The vote was 52-40, but as an amendment to a constitutional amendment, it required a two-thirds vote.

Rep. Robin Lundstrom, a sponsor, said many states didn’t allow medical marijuana in edible form. She said Arkansas should move slowly and in a “wise and strategic” way.

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Rep. Doug House, leader of marijuana enabling legislation, said edibles were one of the safest ways to take the medicine. “To ban it is to invite disaster,” he said. He said the sick would be hard-pressed to take medical marijuana and home cook their own edibles.

Rep. Tim Lemons said he’d voted against medical marijuana in November but his “world turned upside down” in January, an apparent reference to a cancer diagnosis for his wife. Since seeing people in treatment for cancer, he said, he’d concluded, “there’s no way they could manufacture their own.” He said the key was education to keep medicine out of the hands of children.

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