Three failed votes are causing marijuana backers to refocus their efforts on recreational pot

The movement to legalize recreational marijuana has hit a wall of resistance and is failing in all three states where it happened on the ballot this year and leading proponents of a tactical shift that focused more on state legislatures and the federal government.

Over the past dozen years, the number of states legalizing adult use of marijuana has rapidly increased from zero to 24, even though it remains illegal under federal law. But no new states joined that list on Tuesday as initiatives dwindled in FloridaNorth Dakota and South Dakota.

It will be “a potentially more difficult hill to climb in the future to implement legalization in the other 26 states,” Paul Armentano, deputy director of the marijuana advocacy group NORML, said Wednesday.

That’s because many of the remaining states do not allow citizen ballot initiatives, meaning the path to legalization must go through state lawmakers who oppose it.

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

The ballot box battle for recreational marijuana comes despite a possible softening of marijuana policy at the federal level. The US Department of Justice has done that proposed to reclassify it from a Schedule I drug to a less dangerous Schedule III drug, and President-elect Donald Trump has done just that support for the change has been signaled.

About 6 in 10 voters nationwide said they support 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 states where ballots were lost on Tuesday.

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

The campaign was one of the most expensive of more than 140 measures in November’s state elections. Supporters have raised $153 million through the end of October, almost all of it from Trulieve, Florida’s largest medical marijuana operator.

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

The expensive campaign in Florida stood in stark contrast to the poorly funded campaigns in North and South Dakota. It also highlighted a recent trend in which marijuana legalization has seen heavy efforts funded by existing medical marijuana providers that benefit from expansion.

“We have reached the point where there is actually very little philanthropic funding for cannabis reform initiatives,” said Matthew Schweich, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project and leader of the failed campaign in South Dakota.

This year marked the third attempt for recreational marijuana initiatives in the Dakotas. Voters approved a measure in South Dakota in 2020 that was later rejected by the courts, and voters rejected another 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 try to do this anymore, because we are not a well-funded political movement,” Schweich said.

Citing the narrow loss, a group supporting the North Dakota initiative urged state lawmakers to pass their own version of cannabis legalization.

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

One state that has marijuana advocates hoping for success is New Hampshire. The Republican-led House and Senate each passed bills there this year that would have legalized recreational marijuana, but they could not agree on a final version.

In some Democratic-led states, marijuana advocates have pushed for legalization while emphasizing social justice and equality arguments. disproportionate enforcement of drug laws has led to minorities experiencing incarceration at higher rates than white people, despite similar rates of cannabis use.

But as they focus on Republican-led states, Armentano said, advocates may need to emphasize the potential of marijuana legalization to deliver cost savings and free up police and prosecutors to focus on other crimes.

“I think there will be some change in tactics in the future,” Armentano said. “There may be some shift in the way this issue is framed.”

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Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut in Washington contributed to this report.