Medical cannabis businesses in Nebraska, where patient access has not launched more than a year after voters legalized the drug, are on track to become the only state-sanctioned MMJ operators at risk of federal prosecution.
That’s because Nebraska is absent from a list of states in a federal spending bill finalized last month in which, for the past 12 years, Congress has blocked the Department of Justice from prosecuting state-legal medical cannabis operations.
“This is the first time a newly authorized state has been left out since these protections were enacted,” Steph Sherer, founder and executive director of MMJ advocacy group Americans for Safe Access, said in a statement.
“Nebraska is now being pushed back into that dangerous territory,” she added.
Nebraska not included in landmark federal medical cannabis protections
Since 2015, a budget rider included in federal spending bills has provided medical cannabis operators a modicum of security by barring federal funding to be used to stop states “from implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana.”
The language tucked into the Commerce, Justice and Science spending bill, initially called the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment after its bipartisan sponsors, has been included in federal funding packages since and has been referenced by federal judges.
Forty-seven states were listed in recent versions – but not Nebraska, where voters legalized MMJ in November 2024.
A draft of the Senate spending bill last summer excluded Nebraska from the budget rider list.
But with the state’s medical marijuana program already well behind schedule, cannabis advocates are sounding the alarm over Nebraska’s absence from the federal rider Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed into law last month.
New risk for nascent, limited Nebraska medical cannabis industry
Nebraska voters legalized medical cannabis in 2024 after a contentious campaign that included lawsuits intended to keep the measure off the ballot and allegations of fraud that went to trial.
Subsequent challenges, such as a lawsuit brought against the program by a former state senator active with a prominent national anti-cannabis organization, have been dismissed in court.
But almost a year and a half later, the limited-license program has failed to launch – with no exact timeline for when operators can begin – amid new restrictions imposed by state officials.
These include a limit of no more than 1,250 flowering plants per licensed cultivator, one of the strictest in the country.
Only three out of four cultivators allowed under state regulations have obtained licenses, according to the Nebraska Examiner.
None of them has begun cultivating plants as the state has yet to finalize a seed-to-sale tracking program.
When they do, patients will be barred from obtaining flower or edibles.
But the federal situation poses a host of new questions, including whether operators will choose to participate in a program open to such risk, according to cannabis advocates.
Who is behind the federal risk for Nebraska medical marijuana?
“The fact that we were not added to the rider to provide the same protections that every other state has on this, you really have to wonder ‘why’ and who is behind this,” Christa Eggers, executive director of Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana, the sponsor of the 2024 ballot measures, told the Examiner.
“This wasn’t an oversight in our eyes.”
General spending bills have been a source of Washington chaos, including the longest-ever federal government shutdown in the fall. They have also become a vehicle for drug policy.
That includes a redefinition of hemp to exclude nearly all hemp-derived products from 2018 Farm Bill protections that Trump signed into law in November.
Many hemp operators are unsure how to proceed in 2026 ahead of the ban on hemp-derived THC products set to go into effect in November.
So far, none of Nebraska’s representatives in Washington has taken responsibility for keeping their state off the Rohrabacher-Farr list.
A spokesperson for Republican U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts, a two-term Nebraska governor who opposed state lawmakers passing cannabis-related legislation, did not answer the Examiner when directly asked whether he was involved, the newspaper reported.
Ricketts has also gone on record opposing Trump’s Dec. 18 executive order to reschedule marijuana.
Midwestern states are turning anti-marijuana
Nebraska’s medical cannabis program has already been stalled thanks to opposition from state officials.
Nebraska’s Republican Gov. Jim Pillen, who opposed the 2024 ballot measure, refused to sign off on regulations setting up a state MMJ industry without the strict plant count.
He’s also taken steps to block tribal cannabis access in the state.
That’s in line with a new attitude shown by his Oklahoma counterpart.
Earlier this month, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt called for a ballot initiative that would roll back the state’s $600 million medical cannabis industry.
Chris Roberts can be reached at chris.roberts@mjbizdaily.com.
