Oklahoma Marijuana Activists Launch Signature Drive To Put Legalization On 2026 Ballot—With Hundreds Of Retailers Lending Support

Oklahoma activists officially started signature gathering for a 2026 ballot initiative to legalize adult-use marijuana in the state on Wednesday—and the campaign has hundreds of retailers, primarily medical cannabis dispensaries, ready to lend a hand.

About a month after Oklahomans for Responsible Cannabis Action (ORCA) cleared a procedural hurdle to allow signature collecting, the work has now begun. This comes about two years after an earlier version of the reform was rejected by voters at the ballot.

There are challenges unique to this election cycle, as earlier this year Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) gave final approval to legislation that some advocates worry will inhibit future citizen-led policy changes, including cannabis reform.

The law puts additional requirements on initiative “gist” language that voters see on the ballot and also revise policies around signature gathering to make it so petitioners could only submit signatures from up to 11.5 percent of registered voters in a single county for statutory proposals and 20.8 percent for constitutional measures.

To that end, ORCA is leveraging a sizable network of allies in the state’s existing medical cannabis space and other industries where hundreds have already agreed to keep petitions on-site, according to a lead organizer of the campaign.

“I feel pretty good. The strategy is pretty straightforward. At this point, we’ve managed to secure somewhere between 250 and 300 retail locations across the state—a lot of dispensaries, but also a lot of other allied locations” to keep signature packets on site for voters, Jed Green, founder of OCRA, told Marijuana Moment on Monday. “That number does continue to grow daily.”

“What we are focused on right now is making sure as many of those retail locations have all got signature packets here this week—and so all the printing has gone on, all of that assemblies are going and we’re starting to pump those into the distribution network,” he said.

For its initial signature gathering campaign, ORCA will be focused on ensuring that rural areas are set up so that advocates will be able to monitor them as a “baseline.” After that point, they’ll target the state’s larger cities like Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

“Then on top of that, it’s a great time of the year for canvassing at public events. We’ve got home football games, fairs, a ton of public events going on and concerts in the fall,” Green said. “Step one is to make sure that we’ve got good retail access, and then, after that, the more traditional signature gathering.”

One of the challenges that campaign is facing is a relatively new law that put additional requirements on initiative “gist” language that voters see on the ballot and also revised policies around signature gathering to make it so petitioners could only submit signatures from up to 11.5 percent of registered voters in a single county for statutory proposals and 20.8 percent for constitutional measures.

That law is currently being litigated for reasons unrelated to the specific cannabis proposal.

In any case, Green said that after 30 days of its signature drive, “we’ll take a look at how we’re doing and what we may need to do to accelerate things if needed.”

Overall, “folks have gone from cautiously optimistic a few months ago to relatively enthusiastic now, and we’re seeing folks coming on board daily to to help out,” he said.

“So everyone seems pretty enthusiastic right now. On the administrative end, we feel good. We’ve got everyone set up for success,” he said. “It’ll be interesting to see how everything goes the first 30 days.”

In order to ultimately qualify for ballot placement, ORCA will need to collect at least 172,993 valid signatures from voters across the state.

Green previously said that one of the key differences between the initiative his organization is pushing and the one that failed at the ballot in 2023 is that it accounts for concerns about licensing rules. Many have criticized the rollout of the state’s medical marijuana law, which led to a dramatic proliferation of dispensaries, and Green said the failed adult-use measure effectively duplicated that licensing scheme.

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Meanwhile in Oklahoma, lawmakers in March advanced a bill aimed at protecting gun rights of state-registered medical marijuana patients, although federal law still bars cannabis users from owning firearms regardless of their patient status.

Another state bill filed in January by a GOP legislator would criminalize the use of medical cannabis during pregnancy.

Photo courtesy of Brian Shamblen.