Inside SQ 837: Incentivizing Rural Communities By Redirecting Cannabis Taxes
Watch this short clip from The Green Brief podcast, then read on to understand how SQ 837 could reshape local funding across Oklahoma.
In a state where rural infrastructure often falls through the cracks, SQ 837 proposes a straightforward solution: give local governments a guaranteed cut of cannabis tax revenue—and only if they support access.
Jed Green, longtime cannabis advocate and campaigner for SQ 837, breaks it down in this excerpt from our podcast:
JED GREEN (01:04:10.108)
Generally most days county and municipal governments are largely more efficient in delivering services directly to your door or on that road than the state government is.And so what we want to do is we want to put some of those dollars back into the counties and back into the municipalities to help those local budgets out. And so not make them hope for a state appropriation, but get those dollars there.
So the way this works is that counties and municipalities get 30% of what occurs within their political subdivision. So if you have a county or municipality that doesn't have any dispensaries because they ran them all off, well, then they get no money from marijuana.
Pretty simple.
This is one of the key mechanisms that makes SQ 837 unique. Unlike many state programs that centralize revenue, this one keeps a significant portion of cannabis taxes local. It’s a built-in incentive for communities—particularly rural ones—to support a legal, regulated market instead of driving it underground or pushing it out entirely.
Why It Matters:
Counties and municipalities receive 30% of all cannabis tax revenue generated within their borders
Communities that opt out of cannabis access also opt out of cannabis dollars
Local governments don't have to wait for state appropriations—they get automatic, formula-based funding
It’s a model designed to empower the communities that choose to participate and to reflect the reality that local governments are often more responsive and efficient in delivering public services than the state.
As Jed puts it: “Pretty simple.”
