Trio of ballot failures leads marijuana backers to refocus their efforts for recreational weed

The movement to legalize recreational marijuana has run into a wall of resistance, failing in all three states where it was on the ballot this year and leading proponents to weigh a tactical shift focused more on state legislatures and the federal government.

Over the past dozen years, the number of states legalizing marijuana use by adults rose rapidly from zero to 24, even as it remains illegal under federal law. But no new states joined that list Tuesday, as initiatives went down in Florida, North Dakota and South Dakota.

It's “going to be a potentially tougher hill to climb going forward to enact legalization in the other 26 states,” Paul Armentano, deputy director of the marijuana advocacy organization NORML, said Wednesday.

That's because many of the remaining states don't allow citizen ballot initiatives, meaning the path to legalization must pass through state legislatures that have been resistant.

Voters on Tuesday did approve medical marijuana in Nebraska, which would become the 39th state to allow it. But the measure still faces a legal challenge.

Ballot box struggles for recreational marijuana come despite a potential softening of marijuana policies at the federal level. The U.S. Justice Department has proposed to reclassify it from a Schedule I drug to a less dangerous Schedule III drug, and President-elect Donald Trump has signaled support for the change.

About 6 in 10 voters across the country said they favor legalizing recreational use nationwide, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 U.S. voters. Support for national legalization was slightly lower in some of the states where ballot measures lost Tuesday.

In Florida the proposed legalization of recreational marijuana received support from a majority of voters, which would have been sufficient to pass in most places. But it fell short of the 60% supermajority required for constitutional amendments in the state.

The campaign was among the costliest of the more than 140 measures on state ballots this November. Supporters raised $153 million through the end of October, coming almost entirely from Florida’s largest medical marijuana operator, Trulieve.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis helped lead opposition, using state resources to run ads raising concerns about marijuana. Jessica Spencer, the advocacy director for the opposition campaign, praised DeSantis' “conviction, courage and fearlessness" against “Big Weed.”

The pricey Florida campaign was a sharp contrast to the lightly funded ones in North and South Dakota. It also highlighted a recent trend in which marijuana legalization efforts have been heavily financed by existing medical marijuana providers who stand to benefit from expansion.

“We’ve reached the point where there’s basically very little philanthropic funding for cannabis reform initiatives,” said Matthew Schweich, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project and leader of the unsuccessful South Dakota campaign.

This year marked the third attempt for recreational marijuana initiatives in the Dakotas. Voters approved a South Dakota measure in 2020 that was later struck down in court, and voters rejected another one in 2022. North Dakotans voted against recreational marijuana in 2018 and 2022, both times by larger margins than this year.

“The real question is where should we even attempt this anymore, because we’re not a well-funded political movement,” Schweich said.

Citing the close loss, a group backing the North Dakota initiative urged state lawmakers to consider passing their own version of cannabis legalization.

“This conversation is far from over,” New Economic Frontier said in a statement while pledging to “continue working toward practical solutions.”

One state where marijuana advocates are hoping for success is New Hampshire. The Republican-led House and Senate there each passed bills this year that would have legalized recreational marijuana, but they failed to agree on a final version.

In some Democratic-led states, marijuana advocates have pushed for legalization while emphasizing social justice and equity arguments, noting that disproportionate enforcement of drug laws has resulted in minorities facing incarceration at a higher rate than white people despite similar rates of cannabis use.

But when focusing on Republican-led states, Armentano said, advocates may need to stress the potential for marijuana legalization to yield cost savings and free up police and prosecutors to focus on other crimes.

“I think that there is going to be some pivoting in tactics going forward,” Armentano said. “Potentially there could be some shifting in the way this issue has been framed.”