An Arizona political consultant has ditched a Republican Party-backed effort to end adult-use cannabis sales in the state.
And one reason why is the Trump administration’s order reclassifying medical cannabis as medicine under federal law, consultant Sean Noble told Capitol Media Services.
Another, he told the outlet, was the fact he was misled by legalization opponents.
The push to repeal adult-use cannabis sales in Arizona, which recorded roughly $1.2 billion in sales last year, was one of three state-level recriminalization efforts recently mounted by legalization foes
Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a Washington D.C.-based anti-legalization organization that’s also suing to block rescheduling, said late last year it was committing “multimillion-dollar support” behind voter initiative campaigns that would end adult-use sales in Maine and Massachusetts.
But after the Maine effort also failed to submit any signatures by a February deadline, only the Massachusetts effort remains alive in 2026.
What happened to the Arizona adult-use marijuana sales repeal effort?
In Arizona, the repeal effort needed to collect nearly 256,000 signatures by July 2026 to qualify for the November 2026 ballot.
And with a signature-gathering campaign alone costing an estimated $5 million, that was simply too expensive, Noble explained.
The political environment has also changed following the April 23 final order reclassifying medical cannabis as a Schedule 3 drug, a designation that acknowledges cannabis’ medicinal value, he told Capitol Media Services.
Nearly 60% of voters approved Arizona adult-use marijuana legalization in 2020. Since then, support has only grown, in part because of the Trump administration’s support.
Noble was also operating under false assumptions, he added.
As he explained to Capitol Media Services, part of the reason why he launched the repeal campaign was “a pretty profound belief” that cannabis companies were marketing their products, “at least indirectly, to children.”
“I was kind of relying on things that I had seen or read from other people,” he said, according to Capitol Media Services, without identifying who led him astray.
As for cannabis companies, “They have not done some of the things that I thought they were doing,” he said.
Massachusetts cannabis advocates challenge recriminalization effort in court
Meanwhile, cannabis advocates are mounting a constitutional challenge to the Massachusetts voter initiative that would end adult-use sales in that state while keeping medical marijuana mostly intact.
An attorney for marijuana social-equity advocates told the state Supreme Judicial Court this week that the state attorney general’s summary of the recriminalization ballot initiative is “grossly deficient,” according to Statehouse News.
That’s because it’s not immediately clear to voters that the Act to Restore A Sensible Marijuana Policy also undermines local control over cannabis businesses and ends the statewide marijuana social equity program, attorney Adam Fine said.
Adult use retail sales generated $2 billion in tax revenue for the state through Sept. 2025.
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According to campaign finance records, SAM Action Inc., the political arm of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, contributed $1.55 million to the campaign as of the end of 2025, the most recent data available.
SAM also filed a petition Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit opposing the Justice Department’s marijuana rescheduling order.
