LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – A theme emerging from the the 2025 legislative session is the paring down of ballot initiatives that were overwhelmingly supported by Nebraska voters.

Bills dealing with paid sick leave and minimum wage already advanced on the Unicameral floor, and this week, an amendment to a medical marijuana bill could substantially rein in its rollout. That has advocates of medical cannabis sounding the alarm.

More than 70% of Nebraskans approved of medical marijuana on the November 2024 ballot. A slightly smaller amount, 67%, supported the creation of a commission to regulate it. But lawmakers see an issue.

“The Liquor Control Commission doesn’t have any funding or any tasking or any guidance,” Sen. Rick Holdcroft, chair of the General Affairs Committee, said.

That’s where the Nebraska Legislature steps in. The General Affairs Committee prioritized LB 677, introduced by Sen. Ben Hansen, that would build a framework and provide funding to the new Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission. But right now, it’s a balancing act.

“My goal is to get a clean bill out of committee, and things don’t turn into a mess on the floor,” Hansen said.

This week, Holdcroft floated an amendment to Hansen’s bill to curtail it, prohibiting smoking and restricting who has access.

The lists in other states includes dozens of qualifying conditions: things like acute pain, glaucoma, all forms of cancer and anxiety. Holdcroft wants Nebraska’s whittled down to fewer than 10 qualifying conditions, with epilepsy and terminal cancer at the top of the list.

“Those are the types of things, I think, the people of Nebraska wanted to see in their medical cannabis,” Holdcroft said.

But some on the committee see the exclusion of certain conditions as arbitrary.

“If you pick a number and then you attempt to decide which conditions can be listed up to that number, you are going to leave out some very necessary conditions,” Sen. John Cavanaugh said.

Crista Eggers, who heads up the Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana organization that collected signatures for the ballot initiatives, said that dilutes the voice of Nebraskans.

“Stripping and narrowing and watering down what the people pass to something that does not help, that leaves patients out, that leaves leaves someone trying to determine whether this person’s life is more valuable than another’s, that’s not for this body to decide,” Eggers said. “Watching essentially this completely be gutted, the will of the people tossed aside, we aren’t going tolerate it.”

Holdcroft said an expansive version of medical marijuana would be a slippery slope.

“The risk is recreational marijuana,” he said. “If you can convince your doctor that you know, ‘I have a headache and I need marijuana,’ and you convince your doctor to write you a recommendation, then what’s the difference between that and recreational marijuana?”

But Hansen sees it the other way.

“You upset the will of the people, you’re going to see recreational marijuana on the ballot a lot sooner than you normally would, which is what the people who oppose this bill are so afraid of” Hansen said. “It’s about playing chess, not checkers.”

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