Massachusetts voters refused to undo legal weed, Idaho voters kept their power to legalize it and Texas rejected both Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton. Here’s what changed on election night and what it could mean next year.
For the first time, a state asked voters whether they wanted to take legal weed back. Massachusetts answered no, by roughly three to one.
That was the headline cannabis result of Tuesday’s midterms, but it wasn’t the only one. Idaho voters rejected an amendment that would have stripped them of the power to legalize marijuana. Houston made possession its police department’s lowest priority. In Texas, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton both lost. And the list of states where legalization could advance next year got longer.
There was one exception. New Hampshire reelected a governor who wants to keep adult-use cannabis illegal.
The Ballot Measures
The Associated Press called Massachusetts Question 8 for No just before midnight Eastern. The measure would have repealed the laws that allow licensed adult-use sales and home growing, starting in 2028, while keeping the medical program and limited possession legal. Roughly three-quarters of voters said no in unofficial results.
The repeal campaign wasn’t cheap. Spending on Question 8 approached $6.5 million, making it the most expensive question on the state’s ballot, and SAM Action, the political arm of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, put in more than $3.7 million of it, according to CommonWealth Beacon. The state’s legal market, which the industry puts at about $1.65 billion a year, stays open.
“Despite a well-funded scare campaign, Massachusetts voters have chosen common sense by defeating the ballot initiative to end the state’s legal adult-use cannabis market,” Adam J. Smith, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, said in a statement.
SAM didn’t concede much. “Though we came up short tonight, this is a pyrrhic victory for the industry and we are not backing down—Maine and other states will be next,” Kevin Sabet, SAM Action’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
In Idaho, lawmakers had asked voters to amend the state constitution so that only the legislature could legalize marijuana or any other psychoactive substance. That would have ended citizen initiatives on the issue for good. About two-thirds of voters rejected it, according to unofficial results, and AP called the race.
Weed stays illegal in Idaho, including for patients. But the door that advocates tried and failed to walk through this year, with a medical cannabis petition that came up short on signatures, stays open.
“HJR 4 wasn’t anti-marijuana; it was anti-democracy.”
Paul Armentano, deputy director, NORML
Houston voters approved Proposition A, the Houston Freedom Act, with nearly 72% in early unofficial returns. The charter amendment makes Class A and B misdemeanor marijuana possession the Houston Police Department’s lowest enforcement priority and bans no-knock warrants. It doesn’t legalize anything. Marijuana remains illegal under Texas law.
Texas Cleans House
The biggest cannabis story outside a ballot question came out of Texas, where Democrats swept the top of the ticket.
Vikki Goodwin unseated Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who led the 2025 push to ban hemp-derived THC products. The legislature passed that ban before Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed it, and Goodwin campaigned on undoing restrictions on hemp THC and taxing those products to help pay for health coverage for low-income Texans, the Texas Tribune reported. Republicans held the state Senate, which the lieutenant governor presides over, so her room to move may be limited.
Abbott lost too. Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated him to become the state’s first Latina governor and its first Democratic governor in more than three decades.
And James Talarico beat Paxton for the U.S. Senate. As attorney general, Paxton sued Austin, San Marcos, Denton, Killeen, Elgin and Dallas to overturn local decriminalization ordinances that city voters had approved. Talarico campaigned on legalizing marijuana for adults and has said he wants to work with President Donald Trump on it. “He’s for legalizing marijuana, and so am I,” he said of the president in an interview last month. “I hope we can do that together and expunge the records of people who have been locked up for a crime that doesn’t hurt anybody,” he added, as Marijuana Moment reported.
Paxton’s successor won’t be a Republican either. Democrat Nathan Johnson won the attorney general’s race, which could change how the state handles its lawsuits against cities that adopted local decriminalization.
Who Could Legalize Next
The most consequential results for legalization may have come in state legislatures.
In Pennsylvania, the House has already passed a legalization bill, and Gov. Josh Shapiro, who won reelection, keeps putting legalization in his budget. The Republican-led state Senate was the wall. Democrats now say they’ve flipped it for the first time in more than three decades, though some races were still being counted Wednesday. If that holds, Democrats will control the governor’s office and both chambers for the first time since 1993, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
“With unified control of state government, there is no reason to delay legalization any longer,” Meredith Buettner Schneider, executive director of the Pennsylvania Cannabis Coalition, said in a statement.
Wisconsin, which has neither a comprehensive medical cannabis program nor legal adult-use sales, flipped both chambers of its legislature to Democrats and elected Democrat David Crowley governor. That gives the party full control of state government for the first time since 2011. Crowley backed full legalization during the campaign.
In Iowa, Democrat Rob Sand won the governor’s race. He wants to legalize cannabis and tax it like alcohol. Unlike in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, he’ll still need a legislature to go along.
New Hampshire went the other way. Gov. Kelly Ayotte, who opposes legalizing adult-use cannabis and vetoed a medical cannabis greenhouse bill in June, won another term. New Hampshire is still the only state in New England without legal adult-use sales.
What Congress Could Do
Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate. The last time Democrats ran the House, it passed bills to federally legalize marijuana twice, in 2020 and 2022. The Senate never took either one up.
Advocates are optimistic. Some of the people who finance the industry are not getting carried away.
“The House passed the SAFE Banking Act seven times, and the Senate Banking Committee approved it in 2023, but it has never received a vote on the Senate floor,” Anthony Coniglio, CEO of cannabis real estate lender NewLake Capital Partners, said in a statement.
“A change in leadership doesn’t by itself change that record.”
Anthony Coniglio, CEO, NewLake Capital Partners
Rescheduling, meanwhile, runs on its own clock. State-licensed medical marijuana moved to Schedule III in April. The broader DEA proceeding to reschedule the rest of the plant is still pending, and currently paused while the parties file arguments over a federal watchdog report. Congress doesn’t control that process either way.
SAM says Maine is next. The only state that has tried to take legal weed back from its voters lost by about 50 points.
