The short version
Where we started: we knew Hilgers, now Attorney General, had said in May 2025 that "the people did not vote for recreational marijuana." What we could not confirm was what he said or how he voted on LB474, the 2021 Medicinal Cannabis Act, when he was Speaker. Search summaries called him opposed to medical cannabis broadly but named no vote and no statement.
What the record shows: the Legislature's own transcript of floor debate on May 12, 2021 settles both. Hilgers rose in opposition to LB474 and in support of the bracket motion, spoke on it at least four times that day, and is recorded as voting no on the motion to invoke cloture. The vote was 31 ayes, 18 nays. Thirty-three were needed. He is also recorded as voting yes on Sen. Slama's motion to bracket the bill, which failed 16 to 27.
The record, dated
| Date | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| May 12, 2021 | Hilgers, presiding as Speaker at times and speaking as a senator at others, addresses LB474 on the floor: "I rise in opposition to LB474, and in support of the bracket motion." | Floor debate transcript, first remarks near the start of debate |
| May 12, 2021 | Motion to bracket LB474 (Sen. Slama), roll call in reverse order: "Senator Hilgers voting yes." Result: "16 ayes, 27 nays." "The bracket motion is not successful." | Same transcript, roll call |
| May 12, 2021 | Cloture roll call, taken in reverse order: "Senator Hilgers voting no." Result: "31 ayes, 18 nays." "Motion to invoke cloture is not adopted." | Same transcript, roll call |
| May 2025 | At a press conference, as Attorney General: "I think the people did not vote for recreational marijuana. And that's what it is. That's what I think." The same report quotes him next asking for a peer-reviewed study on smoking marijuana. The report says only "a May press conference." | KOLN/1011 Now, Nov 4, 2025 |
What voters were asked, November 2024
Set next to his May 2025 line about "recreational marijuana," here is the wording of the two measures Nebraska voters approved on November 5, 2024, as filed with the Secretary of State.
The statute text defines the term the same way: "Cannabis for medical purposes" means cannabis intended for qualified patients "for the alleviation of a medical condition, its symptoms, or side effects of the condition's treatment." The word "recreational" does not appear in either petition text. Both measures passed; see the Nebraska Examiner's results story from November 6, 2024.
This page does not say what the Attorney General meant by his 2025 line. It sets his words next to the words voters were given, so a reader can compare them. One caveat on sourcing: the ballot itself may print a shortened version of each question. The text above is the petition wording on file with the Secretary of State, and we did not pull the printed ballot.
What the 2025 remark was about
The Nebraska Examiner covered a Hilgers news conference on May 7, 2025. Its story reports that he opposed Legislative Bill 677, from Sen. Ben Hansen, a bill to set up regulations around the voter-approved laws, and asserted that it was a path to recreational marijuana that would "supercharge the black market." The Examiner story does not contain the "did not vote for recreational marijuana" sentence. That sentence comes from KOLN's later report, which says only "a May press conference." We have not confirmed that it was said at the May 7 event. It fits the same subject, but the link between the two is ours, not the reporters'.
Others answered on the record in the same Examiner story. Sen. Hansen said calling LB 677 recreational "couldn't be farther from the truth." Sen. John Cavanaugh said nearly all of Hilgers's criticisms were of the ballot measure, not LB 677. The Examiner also reports that the ballot measure legalized up to 5 ounces of cannabis for all parts of the plant, including flower, and that Hilgers called allowing flower a "gigantic loophole" toward smoking. Those are claims by named people, reported as such. This page does not decide between them.
Source: Nebraska Examiner, May 7, 2025, read directly. Read September 20, 2026.
In his own words, May 12, 2021
Earlier that morning he said the core of his opposition was that "this is not in our hands as a state Legislature." The reasoning he laid out was legal, not medical: the Supremacy Clause, the federal Controlled Substances Act listing marijuana as a Schedule I drug, and the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Gonzales, which he said applied to LB474. He said federal authorities ought to authorize research if there are true medicinal purposes. He also referred repeatedly to an Attorney General's Opinion as the basis for his view.
Two statements, side by side
Not a verdict. Two things he has said on the record, years apart. In 2021, as a senator and Speaker, his stated position was that the state could not act on medical cannabis because federal law preempts it. As Attorney General:
Between the two, Nebraska voters approved the two medical cannabis measures above in November 2024. We have not asked the Attorney General's office how the two positions fit together, and this page does not say they conflict.
Where the preemption question stands, September 2026
His 2021 argument rested on federal law: marijuana's Schedule I status and the Supremacy Clause. What has happened since, as reported by the Nebraska Examiner:
- September 11, 2026: the Nebraska Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling, affirmed dismissal of former Sen. John Kuehn's suit arguing that federal law preempts the state's medical cannabis laws. The court held Kuehn lacked standing. It did not decide the preemption question, and the dismissal was without prejudice. (Examiner, read directly)
- Federal status: the same story says the U.S. Attorney General downgraded state-licensed medical cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III in April 2026, and that Hilgers's office has joined a federal lawsuit seeking to challenge the DOJ's rescheduling.
- September 4, 2026: the Examiner headlined that the court upheld the validity of the state medical cannabis laws. We have not read that story, only its headline and the Sept 11 story's mention of it.
Nothing here says what Hilgers thinks of these developments. We have not asked his office.
What we have not confirmed
Other votes on LB474 that day. The Legislature’s Recorded Votes page lists two: the bracket (MO65, “until 06/10/21”), 16–27–5, and cloture (MO67, Sen. Wishart), 31–18–0. The 31 yes and 18 no names match the cloture column of the table above exactly.
Slama’s motion to reconsider. It is MO66, “Reconsider the vote taken on MO65.” The bill’s Actions page shows it filed and “pending” (Journal p. 1413), pending again when cloture was filed (p. 1417), then “Wishart MO67 failed” (p. 1417), with no later action on MO66. The bill was carried over (January 5, 2022, p. 53) and indefinitely postponed on April 20, 2022 (p. 1428). MO66 was never voted on. The record does not say it was withdrawn or ruled on.
The Clerk’s transcript of May 12, 2021 (214 PDF pages, searched on our own machine) agrees: it announces the motion on p. 87, has senators speaking on it through p. 132, and goes from Sen. Wishart closing (p. 153) to her cloture motion (p. 154) with no vote on the reconsideration. Cloture was “not adopted” on p. 155 (31 to 18; 33 needed).
Read 2026-09-23 — this is no longer unconfirmed. The opinion he called “unassailable” is Attorney General Opinion 19-010, dated and date-stamped August 1, 2019, written by Attorney General Douglas J. Peterson and Deputy Solicitor General David A. Lopez, and requested by Sen. Andrew La Grone — a detail the floor debate did not mention. It runs eight pages and is published as a scan; we read it from the Attorney General's own site. Its closing paragraph reads:
Two things the record adds that the floor summary did not. First, the opinion's preemption test is specific: it rests on 21 U.S.C. § 903, under which a state law is preempted only where a “positive conflict” exists such that the federal provision and the state law “cannot consistently stand together.” Second, what it analyses is a regulatory scheme that would facilitate commercial-scale cultivation and sale — not personal use or possession by a patient. Those are different questions, and the opinion answers the first one. We read the introduction and the conclusion in full; we did not transcribe the six pages of analysis between them.
The quotation Sen. Slama read into the 2021 floor record matches the opinion as published. We checked.
The exact date and setting of the "did not vote for recreational marijuana" remark are not confirmed. KOLN says "a May press conference." We have not found the original recording or a story that gives the date.
Earlier search summaries described him as opposed to medical cannabis "broadly." The transcript does not support that wording: his stated reason was federal preemption, and he said he understood the proponents' frustration. Whether he opposes medical cannabis on the merits is not answered by the 2021 record. His 2025 statements are a separate record, above.
His floor time on LB474 was counted by hand from the transcript ("at least four times"), not by an official tally.
How this was checked
The transcript is the Clerk of the Legislature's official record for May 12, 2021 (214 pages, one day). The quotes above were read directly from it. News coverage from May 2021 (KOLN/1011 Now) reports him saying the federal government "should enforce the law," which matches the transcript. The May 7, 2025 and September 11, 2026 Nebraska Examiner stories were read directly in a browser; the KOLN 2025 report was read through a fetch tool. Researched September 20, 2026. Corrections welcome.