The Cannabis Voter Is Real

The Cannabis Voter Is Real

There are just a few hours left to vote, and hemp is on the ballot. It doesn't get its own line, but it is in nearly every race you'll see today. The people who win tonight will decide the future of our hemp industry.

In South Carolina, polls close at 7 p.m., and if you are in line by 7, you can still vote. Find your polling place at scvotes.gov.

The stakes this November

Americans are voting in what is arguably the most contentious and consequential midterm election in the country's history today. Control of Congress is up for grabs and nearly every issue on the table has been turned into a loyalty test for one team or the other.

In the middle of all that noise, one group of voters is walking into the booth with a very specific question on their minds: where does this candidate stand on cannabis?

That is not a hunch. It is what the voters themselves are saying.

Cannabis freedom is on the ballot, printed there or not

A new survey conducted by NuggMD for NORML found that 78 percent of cannabis consumers say a candidate's position on marijuana policy will influence their vote: 41 percent say "significantly" and 37 percent say "somewhat." The poll covered 654 consumers in states with legal markets (NORML; Marijuana Moment).

The timing makes sense. Cannabis policy has rarely moved this much in a single cycle:

  • Rescheduling. In April, the Justice Department moved state-licensed medical marijuana to Schedule III. The broader rescheduling of all marijuana went to a DEA hearing this summer, and in late September a judge stayed those proceedings after opponents asked to add a new GAO report to the record (NORML). The process is still ongoing, frustrating the White House which had expected rescheduling to be complete by now.
  • The federal hemp ban. Last November's spending bill rewrote the federal definition of hemp in a way that would push most hemp-derived THC products off the market. Congress bought a short reprieve, moving most of the ban from November 12 to December 11 (Akerman).
  • The ballot itself. In Massachusetts, Question 8 asks voters to repeal adult-use legalization, the first time any state has voted on undoing an existing legal market. In Idaho, HJR 4 would take away voters' power to set drug policy by initiative (NORML).

Consumers are watching how leaders handle all of this. In a separate NuggMD poll with Marijuana Moment, approval of the Trump administration's cannabis actions among consumers has dropped from 73 percent to 48 percent to 29 percent over three quarters as rescheduling stalled (Marijuana Moment). Most of that drop moved into "neutral." Those are voters waiting to be won.

One of the last bipartisan issues

Here is the number in that poll I keep coming back to: 83 percent of Democratic consumers and 73 percent of Republican consumers say a candidate's cannabis views will shape their vote. A ten-point gap. On most issues this year, the gap between the parties is a massive canyon.

To be fair, Republicans and Democrats do not agree on everything here. Gallup's 2025 measure found 85 percent of Democrats backing full legalization compared with 40 percent of Republicans, a real drop on the right (NORML). But the bipartisan ground is wide in the space between prohibition and a free-for-all: medical access, sensible regulation instead of bans, and keeping farmers and small businesses open.

The red-state numbers back this up. In a February survey SCHAA commissioned from Opinion Diagnostics, 54 percent of South Carolina respondents called themselves Republicans, and 73 percent still chose regulated hemp sales with safeguards over a full ban or a liquor-store-only scheme. That approach won Republican primary voters by 64 points and Democratic primary voters by 68.

Kansas, which still has no medical program at all, tells the same story. A Fort Hays State University survey released last week found 65 percent support for medical marijuana and 61 percent support for legalizing and taxing adult use (The Marijuana Herald).

Look at who is doing the work. Sen. Tim Sheehy, a Montana Republican, has been drafting hemp regulations with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, and has pointed to hemp as a place the two parties can still work together. For that, he is now the target of attack ads from a dark money group that will not disclose its donors, although you can bet the prohibitionist group SAM is involved. (Marijuana Moment). When the Senate voted to delay the hemp ban, it passed 61 to 32, a bipartisan margin you almost never see anymore.

The same pattern shows up with voters. In Massachusetts, a September University of New Hampshire poll found 71 percent planning to vote against repealing legalization (WBUR). That kind of number does not come from one party.

Not a tier 1 issue, and, honestly, it shouldn't be

Let me be honest about something advocates like myself do not always admit: cannabis is not why most people vote, and, in the vast majority of cases, it probably should not be. The economy, health care, foreign policy, public safety, the direction of the country: those are the issues that decide elections.

Our own polling says the same thing. When South Carolina voters in that February survey picked their top issues for state legislative races, inflation (40 percent), taxes and spending (39 percent) and health care (33 percent) led the list. "Drugs and the opioid epidemic" came in at 4 percent.

But "not tier 1" does not mean "not important." For a veteran managing chronic pain without opioids, a retiree who traded a nightly drink for a hemp beverage, a farmer, or one of the thousands of people who work in this industry, these decisions are a tier-1 issue.

And for a lot of voters, cannabis works as a tell. How a candidate handles it shows whether they follow the evidence and their constituents, or the loudest lobby in the room.

One of the few issues where something actually gets done

Here is what makes cannabis different. Ask most voters whether Washington will fix health care costs or immigration this decade and you get a shrug. Ask them about cannabis and they can point to results, often ones they voted for directly.

  • Twenty-four states have legalized adult use, and most of them did it at the ballot box (Ohio State Drug Enforcement and Policy Center).
  • This spring, the federal government moved medical marijuana out of Schedule I for the first time.
  • When the federal hemp ban was weeks from taking effect, farmers, retailers and consumers flooded congressional phone lines, and Congress blinked.
  • Here in South Carolina, the House rejected H.3924 by a vote of 69 to 28 in July after farmers, veterans, seniors and small business owners showed up and made the case for regulation over prohibition, the approach 73 percent of South Carolina voters preferred in February.

That is the point. On cannabis, the distance between a vote and a result is short. The next big decision is already on the calendar: the federal hemp deadline lands on December 11, a little over five weeks from today. Whether Congress replaces the ban with real rules (age limits, lab testing, honest labeling) or lets an entire industry go dark will depend on which lawmakers on your ballot win today.

The cannabis voter is real

For years, politicians treated the cannabis voter as a punchline: young, distracted, and unlikely to show up. That stereotype was always lazy, and today it is simply wrong. The cannabis voter is a veteran, a grandmother, a Republican farmer, a Democratic nurse, a shop owner on Main Street. They are paying closer attention than ever, and four in five of them say this issue will follow them into the voting booth this year.

And this voter can swing a race. In South Carolina, 45 percent of voters say they would be less likely to support a legislator who voted to ban hemp, against just 17 percent who would be more likely. In Kansas, 59 percent say they would likely back a candidate who supports medical marijuana, compared with 17 percent who would not.

These are not single-issue voters. They are voters who have watched cannabis policy actually change, and who know that the people they elect today will decide whether that progress continues or gets rolled back.

So here is my ask. If you haven't voted yet, go now. Then, starting tomorrow, call your senators and your representative before December 11, because the hemp decision will not wait for the next election.

Candidates who ignore this voter are making a mistake. Tonight, a lot of them are going to find out.


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