Nebraska Clears First Legal Medical Cannabis Cultivation

Nineteen months after Nebraska voters legalized medical cannabis, the state finally has a grower cleared to put plants in the ground. The patients the program is built to serve still cannot legally buy anything.

The Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission voted unanimously on Monday, June 22, 2026, to ratify a successful inspection of MahāMotā Cultivation Company in Raymond, making it the first state-licensed cultivator allowed to begin growing. The four-member panel cleared the way for the first legal marijuana plants to take root in Nebraska, about a year after it began meeting and built out the rules for one of the most restrictive cannabis markets in the country.

Voters approved the program decisively in November 2024, passing companion measures that protect patients who possess up to five ounces with a practitioner’s recommendation and create the commission to license the supply chain. The patient measure drew about 71% of the vote and the regulatory measure about 67%, among the strongest margins for any state medical cannabis measure. Turning that mandate into a working program has been slow and contentious.

A supply chain inching forward

MahāMotā is one of four cultivators the commission has licensed, each capped at 1,250 flowering plants, a limit the Marijuana Policy Project has criticized as far too low to support a working program. The other three growers are further behind. Former state senator Kent Rogert, who owns KRL Med, told commissioners his operation has been frozen by Washington County, where the local zoning administrator reversed course and decided an agricultural exemption that covers hemp would not extend to marijuana.

“Every day that goes by, we’re losing time and availability,” Rogert said. His company is appealing a stop-work order that bars it from finishing a greenhouse or entering the property. Commissioners voted 4-0 to renew KRL Med’s license for another six months, signaling they want him to keep trying. A third grower, Midwest Cultivator Group, won approval to relocate from Omaha to Gretna after running into its own zoning problems, while a fourth, Meadowlark Medicinals, delayed its inspection.

With cultivation moving, the commission turned to the next link in the chain. Starting Wednesday, June 24, 2026, it will accept applications for product manufacturers, the licensees who convert harvested cannabis into finished goods. The agency’s rules allow up to four manufacturers, 12 transporters and 12 dispensaries statewide.

Building supply with no buyers

The harder problem sits at the other end of the chain. Nebraska limits legal sales to patients holding recommendations from in-state providers, and advocates say that since the law took effect, no Nebraska physician has publicly agreed to write them, citing fear of professional retaliation from a state government that fought the measure. A bill to shield recommending doctors from discipline stalled in the Legislature this spring. Without those recommendations, the dispensaries the commission is preparing to license would have no qualifying customers.

The products themselves are tightly restricted. Nebraska bans smokable and vaporized cannabis, allowing only forms such as tablets, tinctures, topicals and patches — closer to a pharmacy shelf than a dispensary counter. Regulators have floated a tentative first-sale date of spring 2027, even though the first harvest could be ready this fall.

Opening manufacturer applications split the commission. Commissioner Jim Elworth’s motion passed 3-1, over the objection of interim chair Lorelle Mueting, who warned that taking applications without collecting fees would make Nebraska an outlier and that the timeline ran longer than the 19-day window cultivators were given last fall. Elworth said he was unwilling to wait now that lawmakers have funded the commission’s work.

Regulations still await two signatures

The framework hinges on approvals the commission does not control. In April 2026, commissioners unanimously sent a formal set of permanent regulations to Attorney General Mike Hilgers, a Republican who opposes medical marijuana and has not signed them. Governor Jim Pillen, also a Republican, would then have to sign for the rules to take effect without an expiration date. Until that happens, the program runs on temporary regulations that lapse July 15, 2026, and can be extended for 90 days. The commission meets again July 20, 2026.

The delay has become campaign material. Hilgers faces Democrat Jocelyn Brasher, a former assistant attorney general, in the 2026 race, and she attended Monday’s meeting, saying patients deserve better than the dysfunction she blamed on his office. The standoff fits a wider pattern in states where the officials running the government have pushed back against cannabis measures voters approved. Separate lawsuits over the initiatives, one challenging the petition signatures that put them on the ballot and another raising federal preemption, also remain unsettled, with the signature case pending before the Nebraska Supreme Court.

Nebraska’s growers operate under a shifting federal backdrop as well. A Trump administration order moved state-licensed medical cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III in April 2026, a change now facing legal challenges, leaving regulators to square state rules with an evolving federal framework. For now, the milestone in Lincoln is narrow but real. A state-licensed grower can finally put plants in the ground; whether patients will be able to legally buy what those plants produce is still an open question.