‘A small step’: Committee unanimously advances Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission tweaks
A legislative committee unanimously advanced small tweaks Tuesday to the Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission, presenting a unified front that was a first for legislation on the topic.
The eight-member General Affairs Committee voted to advance an amended version of its Legislative Bill 1235. The amended bill would be three pages, down from 28, and would give the group’s five commissioners a salary of $12,500, create a state cash account to help fund commission work, allow the commission to charge fees for applicants up to $50,000 and require fingerprinting for applicants.
“It doesn’t make really much progress in terms of getting us to where we need to be in providing available, accessible, safe medical cannabis, but it is not hurting that goal,” said State Sen. John Cavanaugh of Omaha, committee vice chair.
“It’s a small step,” Cavanaugh added after the committee vote. “At least it’s not a step backwards.”
Addressing a ‘few holes’
Voters created the commission during the November 2024 election with overwhelming support. Voters in that same election legalized possession of up to 5 ounces of medical cannabis with a recommendation from any health care provider.
State Sen. Rick Holdcroft of Bellevue, committee chair, said after ballot measures are passed, there are typically a “few holes” that need to be filled. In this case, that included funding and the ability to raise fees in a specific account.
Holdcroft said the changes would help the commission move forward. Lawmakers last year balked at a more comprehensive legislative framework meant to fund and help the commission do its work.
“If down the road it looks like there’s something the Legislature needs to do, then we’ll take another look at it,” Holdcroft said of future legislation.
LB 1235 would also include two bills related to alcohol in a committee package — LB 1085 from State Sen. Stan Clouse of Kearney and LB 1128 from State Sen. Rob Dover of Norfolk.
The package will receive one of the committee’s “priority” designations, increasing its chances of reaching the legislative floor for debate. Last year, a more comprehensive medical cannabis framework fell short 23-22. It needed 33 votes.
Provider protections
LB 1235, as introduced on behalf of the Medical Cannabis Commission, would have expanded the commission’s power to patients.
Voters “exclusively” gave the commission the power to regulate “all phases” of possession, manufacture, distribution, delivery and dispensing of medical cannabis. Commissioners, too, would have been granted control over testing facilities, which patients and industry leaders supported.
Commissioners are meant to regulate the new medicine and, eventually, license dispensaries to get the drug to patients.
The original bill, which the committee would replace with the scaled-back version, would have restricted health care providers’ recommendations to only in-state doctors, carving out Nebraskans who went to other states in the meantime.
The commission has similarly proposed restricting access to licensed dispensaries. Under proposed regulations, patients would need an in-state provider. Those providers would need to register as part of a commission-created directory, and providers would submit patient information to the commission. Participating providers would need to complete annual education on medical cannabis.
Advocates have said few, if any, Nebraska medical providers have issued recommendations due to fear of professional or legal consequences.
Cavanaugh will present his LB 933 at a hearing Thursday before the Health and Human Services Committee. That bill would protect providers who recommend medical cannabis from criminal, civil or disciplinary action solely for making such a recommendation.
Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers opposed that section during the attempt to pass the broader legal framework bill in 2025.
Commission requested funding
So far, commissioners have licensed three cultivators and anticipate licensing a fourth next month. The commission delayed discussing a timeline for other application types — product manufacturers, transporters and dispensaries — until its next meeting, March 16, to see how LB 1235 proceeded.
Commissioner Lorelle Mueting of Gretna, interim commission chair, said at a Feb. 2 meeting that it would be important to delay, if the commission could generate some revenue from fees.
“There’s no medical cannabis state in this country that has no money to work with,” Mueting said at the time.
Holdcroft said Commissioner Bud Synhorst of Lincoln indicated that the commission would not charge $50,000 for fees right away. A higher cap would allow flexibility year over year, so commissioners don’t have to go to the Legislature frequently to ask for increases.
Also on Tuesday, the legislative committee unanimously advanced the three newest members for the regulatory commission for full legislative confirmation.
The Medical Cannabis Commission consists of up to two at-large members and the three members of the Liquor Control Commission. All three Liquor Control members receive salaries of $12,500 for their separate duties. Due to resignations in 2025 at Gov. Jim Pillen’s request, all three members are up for confirmation this year.
Liquor Control members would get $25,000 each year with their dual roles.
Patients, families opposed original bill
At LB 1235’s public hearing, also Feb. 2, patients, families and most industry advocates opposed the original bill. Representatives for the state’s new licensed cultivators and a new industry group to represent licensed medical cannabis operators supported the bill.
Michael Johnson, who was born and raised in Lincoln but worked as a cannabis executive the past 15 years, including in Oregon and Colorado, said it wasn’t right to award an “incredible amount of power” to the commission. He described the commission as “doing everything you can to constrict the industry, to limit patient access, to put up barriers and roadblocks, restrict what products can be sold, to limit what providers can recommend.”
“It’s strangling the industry before it gets off the ground,” Johnson testified.
John Cartier, attorney general for the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska, described the original LB 1235 as a “poison pill” that wasn’t about small technical choices. He said the bill was a path for “a program on paper that is not usable for a large portion of Nebraska patients.”
The Omaha Tribe has legalized medical and recreational marijuana on its land. It is focusing on medical cannabis at this time, Cartier has said.
Under LB 1235 as introduced, patients, caregivers and providers would have needed to register with the commission to legally access medical cannabis. That would have more than likely stifled the Omaha Tribe’s desire to give Nebraskans seeking the medicine an alternative route.
Holdcroft, as chair, had been working with commission representatives and the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office on a way to pare back LB 1235. He said testimony led to scaling back and that the commission already had some authority without the Legislature needing to step in.
Some industry groups in favor
Nancy Laughlin-Wagner, CEO of Midwest Cultivators Group, the state’s first licensed cultivator, said the original bill would have provided the commission “the authority it needs to fully operationalize this program.”
“This bill establishes several critical operational infrastructures that must be in place before medical cannabis can be responsibly made available to the patients who so desperately want and need it,” Laughlin-Wagner testified.
Laughlin-Wagner said patient and provider registries would be “truly foundational” to a program. The bill would have explicitly excluded such registries from public records laws.
Robert Wagner, executive director of the new Nebraska Cannabis Trade Alliance, said industry leaders support “clear, stable rules” to allow the industry to be “economically viable.” He said that requires high standards, but not so high that “good actors” are pushed out.
“Every industry needs certainty, and the medical cannabis industry is no different,” Wagner said.
A second commission vision
The same day the General Affairs Committee heard LB 1235, the committee also considered Cavanaugh’s LB 934, which would have made the commission’s seats elected rather than appointed by the governor.
No one testified against the bill, though some committee members questioned the idea.
“What you’re asking for is for us to defy the will of the people and take a different course,” said State Sen. Bob Andersen of Sarpy County.
Cavanaugh responded that it might not follow the “letter” of what voters passed but that it was “faithful” to their “will.”
“The question really is not whether it’s a change in what the voters voted for but whether or not the change is respectful to the spirit and the desires of the voters,” Cavanaugh said.
The committee did not discuss the election-related bill Tuesday.
‘Got what you voted for’
At LB 934’s hearing, Holdcroft and State Sens. Jared Storm of David City and Barry DeKay of Niobrara had also honed their resistance to Cavanaugh’s election bill on one supporter, Amy Burgess, a cannabis business owner since 2020.
Burgess had said the commission had been “set up for failure,” noting the up-or-down election and lack of legislative support after the vote. Storm argued the “marijuana industry” wrote the ballot measures; they were written by families and other local advocates after years of legislative stalling.
“That’s why we voted for the one option that we have, and now we are saying this option was compromised,” Burgess said.
Storm responded, “But you got what you voted for.” Burgess reiterated the current commission wasn’t working as imagined.
Holdcroft, at one point, told Burgess she wrote the ballot initiatives. Burgess responded that she didn’t.
“Someone here did,” Holdcroft responded. “And you cannot sit there and say, ‘That was all we were given, that’s what the people voted for,’ because that’s what the people put forward in the referendum.”
DeKay said conversations should have taken place sooner to iron out language — legislative proposals had been nearly annual endeavors since 2016. Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana, the nonprofit that led the successful 2024 ballot measures, made two earlier petition attempts in 2020 and 2022. The group opposed the original version of LB 1235 but supported Cavanaugh’s LB 934.
Burgess told DeKay it “doesn’t always work that way.”
“Well,” DeKay responded, “that’s part of life then.”
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