CANDIDATES seeking election to state and federal offices in Oklahoma have the next two months to convince voters of their merits. But the June 26 primary ballot includes more than individual races — a potentially damaging state question will be decided that day, too.

State Question 788 seeks to make “medical” marijuana legal in Oklahoma. The use of quote marks here is apt because the question is so broad that if it's approved by voters, marijuana would be medical in name only — ours would be the most liberal medical marijuana law in the nation.

Under SQ 788, “no qualifying conditions” are needed for someone to obtain a marijuana prescription. Someone seeking a prescription (which is good for two years) would only need to “articulate a medical need.” This alone makes it a recipe for trouble.

The proposal requires that marijuana prescriptions be provided by an Oklahoma board-certified physician, but the broad language indicates that numerous professionals other than medical doctors or doctors of osteopathy will be able to do so. Given Oklahoma's unfortunate problems with “pill mill” doctors, more oversight, not less, is needed than what SQ 788 allows. This is especially true because penalties for improperly dispensing the drug would only occur if the dispenser commits an undefined “gross discrepancy” in record-keeping that “cannot be explained.”