North Dakotans could be signing a petition as early as July 4 to put an initiated measure on the November 2010 ballot to repeal the state"s pharmacy ownership law, the group pushing the issue said this week.

The petition, which would require about 13,000 signatures by August 2010, is still being drafted, but should be submitted to the secretary of state for approval in the coming weeks, said Tammy Ibach, spokeswoman for Citizens for Lower Prescription Drugs, on Wednesday.

Ibach said the group is aiming for at least 18,000 signatures.

In February, state lawmakers voted down a proposal that would have repealed the 46-year-old provision that requires pharmacies to be majority-owned by pharmacists, which effectively bars big box stores and hospitals from opening their own pharmacies in the state.

There are some exceptions: the CVS pharmacies currently in the state, formerly Osco Drug stores, existed before the law and were grandfathered in.

"Just because the 2009 legislative assembly said no doesn't mean the people are going to agree," Ibach said. "People are saying please don't stop."

Michael Schwab, the executive vice president of the North Dakota Pharmacists Association, said his group has not taken an official position on the petition. He added that there likely will be an organized effort among North Dakota pharmacists to defeat it.

North Dakota is the only state in the nation with the pharmacy ownership restriction, which has been successfully defended before the U.S. Supreme Court as well as debated and ultimately defeated by state lawmakers in various sessions since its initial passage in 1963.

Opponents to repealing the law say doing so would threaten small-town North Dakota and could close rural pharmacies while advocates say the current law excludes North Dakotans from $4 generic drugs offered at large pharmacy chains.

Ibach said Citizens for Lower Prescription Drugs is an individually-funded organization, an offshoot of the advocacy group North Dakotans for Affordable Healthcare, which backed the latest effort to repeal pharmacy ownership law in the Legislature. The latter group received backing - about $200,000 - from Wal-Mart and Walgreen's.

After the North Dakota House voted 57-35, largely along rural and urban lines, against repealing the law, advocates for changing the state's pharmacy ownership requirements vowed they would return.

Ibach said the petition also will include language that will allow hospital to own pharmacies.

(Reach reporter Brian Duggan at 223-8482 or at brian.duggan@;bismarcktribune.com.)