Arizona voters approved adult-use cannabis in 2020 by a wide margin, opening the door to a regulated market that now includes more than 100 licensed dispensaries across the state. Five years later, a new ballot initiative is attempting something unusual: keeping marijuana legal while dismantling the legal cannabis industry itself.
The proposal, known as the Sensible Marijuana Policy Act for Arizona, was filed with the Arizona Secretary of State on December 17, 2025. If supporters collect 255,949 valid signatures by July 2, 2026, the measure will appear on the 2026 ballot. If approved, it would take effect on January 1, 2028.
The initiative does not seek to criminalize marijuana. Instead, it targets the commercial market that emerged after voters passed the Smart and Safe Arizona Act in 2020.
What the initiative would change
According to the official filing, the measure would preserve several core elements of Arizona’s current marijuana laws.
Adults would still be allowed to:
- Possess up to one ounce of marijuana
- Grow up to six plants at their primary residence
- Use cannabis legally without criminal penalties
- Access the medical marijuana program
- Benefit from existing expungement provisions
What would disappear is the regulated adult-use market itself.
The proposal repeals the statutes that authorize:
- Recreational dispensaries
- Marijuana cultivation and manufacturing facilities
- Testing labs
- Commercial sales
- Cannabis-specific taxation tied to adult use
It also instructs the Arizona Legislature to rewrite related laws governing advertising, taxation and regulatory oversight to align with the new framework.
In effect, Arizona would remain a legal-use state but without legal retail cannabis.
Who is behind the effort
The initiative is being led by Sean Noble, president of the political strategy group American Encore. Noble has a long history in conservative policy circles and previously opposed marijuana legalization efforts in Arizona.
In interviews with the Arizona Daily Star, Noble said the campaign is rooted in concerns about youth exposure, rising THC potency, environmental strain and what he describes as disappointing tax results from legalization.
“They said we’re not going to be marketing to children. We’re not going to be making this easy,” Noble told the paper. “That’s not what we’re seeing.”
Also read: When Cannabis Brands Blur Into Youth Culture, Regulators Notice: Lessons From Tobacco’s Past
The campaign is backed in part by Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a national organization that has opposed legalization efforts in multiple states.
Related: Why You Shouldn’t Trust the Anti-Weed Lobby Smart Approaches to Marijuana
Noble has estimated that collecting signatures alone could cost up to $5 million, with a full campaign potentially reaching $20 million.
A shift in how legalization is being challenged
What makes the Arizona effort notable is not just its substance, but its strategy.
Rather than arguing that cannabis should be illegal, the initiative accepts personal use as a given and instead targets the commercial infrastructure around it. That marks a shift from earlier prohibition-era arguments and reflects a broader recalibration in how legalization is being debated.
According to polling cited by Noble, about 60% of voters said legalization had no direct impact on their lives. Support for medical marijuana remains high, while support drops when voters are asked specifically about recreational sales.
That framing allows the campaign to position itself as a correction rather than a reversal.
Critics say the approach is misleading.
Morgan Fox, political director of NORML, told the Arizona Daily Star that the proposal would push consumers back into unregulated markets and undermine voter intent.
“Prohibitionists failed to make the case for continuing to criminalize cannabis consumers,” Fox said. “Now they are trying to mislead voters into thinking that dismantling legal markets will somehow improve public safety.”
A national test case in the making
Arizona is not alone in reevaluating how legalization works in practice. Across the country, states are grappling with slowing cannabis tax revenue, regulatory fatigue and growing public discomfort with how commercial cannabis has developed.
But there is an important distinction to make. Frustration with the way legalization has been implemented is not the same thing as opposition to legalization itself. In many cases, it reflects the opposite.
Support for personal use, home cultivation and medical access remains strong across party lines. What has increasingly come under scrutiny is the concentration of licenses, the influence of large operators and the sense that legalization, in some states, has drifted away from the voters who originally supported it.
Arizona’s initiative reflects that tension. It does not argue that cannabis should be illegal. It does not seek to jail users or undo expungements. It leaves home growing intact. Instead, it questions whether legalization must necessarily mean a tightly controlled commercial market dominated by a small number of players.
That question is arriving at a complicated political moment. The Trump administration has moved to reschedule marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, a shift that acknowledges medical value but stops well short of full legalization. At the same time, federal policy remains inconsistent, and states are largely left to navigate the consequences on their own.
For advocates of legalization, the risk is not just that Arizona could roll back its retail market. It is that frustration with commercialization could be misread as opposition to cannabis itself, rather than a call for smarter regulation, stronger consumer protections and broader access that does not favor corporate interests.
Home growing, personal use and medical access were the foundation of the legalization movement long before dispensaries and investor decks entered the picture. Any future model that ignores that history risks losing public trust altogether.
If Arizona voters approve this measure, it would mark the first time a state has attempted to separate legalization from commercialization at the ballot box. Whether that leads to reform or regression will depend on what comes next.
What is clear is this. Cannabis is not going back into the shadows. The question is whether the next phase of legalization will belong to voters and patients, or to whoever is best positioned to control the market.
Photo: Shutterstock
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