It may surprise some, but the county’s most progressive medical marijuana market is no longer California, Colorado, or Oregon. Instead, it is Oklahoma, a politically conservative state. Yet, to date, they have a booming medical marijuana market. 

The state has done a 180-flip on marijuana policy since 2014 when the attorney general filed a federal lawsuit to overturn Colorado’s recreational marijuana program. Oklahoma’s attorney general felt that since they are neighboring states, he should have a say in their marijuana laws. However, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. 

Then in June 2018, Oklahoma voters approved one of the loosest medical cannabis programs in the country. Accordingly, two months later, regulators began accepting applications for medical cannabis business licenses. 

By December in the same year, sales began. At this point, the state had almost 900 dispensaries. Since then, they have continued to push the envelope with the medical marijuana program. 

Oklahoma has the most dispensaries total in the nation. Today, they have a booming medical marijuana market, with over 2,000 dispensaries. Industry specialists project that medical marijuana sales from dispensaries will total  $900 million to $1.1 billion in 2021. This change is a 25 percent increase from just last year.

To compare, Ohio legalized medical cannabis in 2016 and has three times the population of Oklahoma. Industry specialists project Ohio to rake in sales this year from $350 million to $475 million. 

Oklahoma’s Unique Market

Despite efforts from politicians to rein in the medical marijuana program, it is the most open medical market in the country. 

A few factors make Oklahoma’s booming medical marijuana market stand out:

“They’ve taken the glass ceiling of how high a medical cannabis program can go, and they’ve broken it, and then exceeded it,” said Andrew Livingston, director of economics at a Denver-based law firm. “Oklahoma has the most open medical cannabis system in the country.”

Oklahoma Leading the Way

As of June 2021, Oklahoma was home to 11,636 active medical marijuana businesses, according to the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority. This change is up from 9,266 companies as of June 2020.

The active businesses include:

The state has 369,247 registered patients and 2,255 caregivers. These numbers represent almost 10 percent of the state population. 

Oklahoma Politicians’ Attempts to Control the Market

Oklahoma is an outlier in terms of comparing them to other states’ medical marijuana programs. As the market develops, the changes reflect what voters approved back in 2018. Lawmakers and regulators implementing voter-approved policies tend not to be the case in most states. 

Typically, lawmakers and regulators will intervene after voters sign off on marijuana legalization ballot measures. For example, they often will establish more restrictive policies like license caps, qualifying medical conditions, or other business restrictions. 

Multiple factors played into Oklahoma’s ballot measure in 2018 that provides for the booming medical marijuana market we see today. 

Number one, the then-governor Mary Fallin put Question 788 – the medical marijuana legalization initiative – on the primary ballot in June instead of the November general election. Livingston said this was likely because she hoped lower voter turnout would kill the chances of the measure passing. 

But Question 788 easily passed, and because the primary occurred in June, state lawmakers that would have agreed to diminish the medical program were busy campaigning for reelection. As a result, Levingston said it was not practical for Fallin to call a special session to rework the initiative. 

Nevertheless, the state Department of Health attempted to ban smokable medical cannabis flower and require all retailers to have licensed pharmacists on staff. 

However, the attorney general stepped in and told the agency they overstepped their authority. 

“Then the Department of Health pulled back significantly, and the law ended up being implemented based on what was written by activists,” Livingston said. “Those two or three major things resulted in the law we see today.”

Possibility of Future Changes

Oklahoma politicians have made several unsuccessful attempts to cap the number of business licenses. But insiders say they don’t believe the backbones of the medical cannabis program that set it apart from other states will change anytime soon. 

“We’re fiercely independent people here, and we don’t want the government telling us what we can or cannot do when it comes to personal liberties,” attorney Sarah Lee Gossett Parrish said. “I think the backbone of our MMJ system will remain.”

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