Inside SQ 837: Protecting Medical Access in a Recreational Market

One of the biggest fears in any transition from medical-only cannabis to full adult-use legalization is the potential erosion of medical access. Patients and medical operators alike often worry that recreational markets will push out the needs of those who rely on cannabis for serious health conditions.

But according to Jed Green, lead proponent of State Question 837, those fears are not only valid—they’re directly addressed in the petition's framework.

In this clip from The Green Brief Podcast, host Mason Pain raises the concern many Oklahomans share: Will recreational cannabis undermine the existing medical program?

A Single Licensing System, Not a Separate One

Jed Green makes it clear—SQ 837 intentionally avoids the missteps of past legalization efforts, like SQ 820, by refusing to create a separate licensing structure for recreational sales.

“The big issue that I think a lot of folks in the industry had with 820 was that… it created a duplicate license system,” Green explains.

Duplicate systems force operators to choose between serving the medical market and chasing the broader recreational one. The result? Medical patients lose access to the quality, pricing, and availability they once relied on.

Instead, SQ 837 consolidates licenses under a unified structure. Marijuana is marijuana. The distinction lies not in the grow room, but at the cash register.

How the Tax System Protects Medical Patients

Rather than regulate products separately, the initiative applies different tax rates based on who is making the purchase.

• Medical Patients: No excise tax (7% removed)

• Adult-Use Consumers: 10% excise tax applied

That means patients maintain affordability and priority access, while dispensaries don’t have to overhaul their operations or inventory just to meet arbitrary regulatory lines.

Why This Matters for Oklahoma

Oklahoma’s medical program has been a national model for patient access—but that access is fragile. In states that created “dual track” licensing systems, patients were often left behind as businesses naturally pursued the larger adult-use market.

Green emphasizes that SQ 837 is designed to prevent this from happening here.

“One of the first rules of politics is: do no harm,” he says. “There’s no need to create a duplicate system.”

Instead, the petition affirms all rights and immunities of the medical program—codifying them in the state constitution and ensuring patients aren’t treated as an afterthought.

Full Transcript: "Inside SQ 837: Protecting Medical Access in a Recreational Market"

Mason Pain (11:57.316)
One of the loudest concerns we always hear, you know, across legal markets when they start as medical and then transform into rec, is that the rec market will just erode the medical market. And I've noticed a lot of infighting within the industry about that specific topic, where people may think that they're protecting their business or their patient access, so they would vote against a recreational measure for that reason, to protect what they already have.

I noticed at its outset, state question 837 explicitly speaks to that by granting all the existing rights and immunities to Oklahoma's existing medical program. So I was wondering if you could speak to that and to those folks who have that concern specifically of how this petition protects rather than replaces medical cannabis access.

JED GREEN (13:03.174)
Yeah, definitely. that's huge thing for us as proponents, campaigners for 788, folks that stick around and defend it and defend patient access. I mean, one of the first rules of politics is do no harm in what you're trying to do.

So, this kind of, flops back a little bit. We'd had a similar system in 818 and 819, but we were able to streamline it once again.

The big issue that I think a lot of folks in the industry had with 820 was that like other states, it created a duplicate license system. You would have a license for medical and a license for recreational. And so that's what we're not doing in 837, which is so foundational—so foundational—to protecting patient access. And here's why:

We have the benefit of learning what happened in other states when they went about it this way. And fundamentally what it created was yet another license that had to be achieved.

So what did that process look like? Those things were fraught with pitfalls—from inclusion programs to limited number of licenses. Was that a lottery? I mean, it had problems everywhere. Also what it did was it forced operators to make a choice. Because they had different sets of regs for medical than they did recreational. So it forced operators to have to make a decision: Are we going to grow product for the recreational side of the market or are we going to grow product for the medical side of the market?

Most operators said, okay, well the greater market is going to be recreational because anyone can get it. If patients really want it, they can just go over there and get it.

That drove up access to product over on the medical side.

You know, we talked a lot about this with everyone when we wrote the original language and the concept is simple: marijuana is marijuana. The difference between medical and recreational use is the intent of the consumer. Why are you consuming this—to cure your cancer, or just because you want to go fishing and smoke a joint? But at the end of the day, it's still all the same product. It’s all marijuana or concentrates, etc.

So there's no need to create a duplicate system. The product is there and we simply say, hey—all licenses are now marijuana licenses. The difference is the cash register. If you have a medical card, you won't pay an excise tax. We removed the 7% excise tax.

If you're using a state ID, then you're going to pay a 10% excise tax on adult-use sales.

So what that basically does is: There’s nothing that has to happen other than at the point of sale system for the dispensary.