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Committee affirms OMMA prepackaging rules despite industry cost concerns
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Summary
The committee approved SJR 53 (5–4) placing OMMA's prepackaging rules into permanent administrative code. OMMA said the requirements mirror statute (HB 3361 and HB 2807); LOFT estimated much higher industry costs and the agency acknowledged survey limits and some arithmetic errors in prior estimates.
The Senate Committee on Administrative Rules voted 5–4 to approve SJR 53, which codifies permanent administrative rules for the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA) implementing prepackaging and other provisions from recent legislation.
Adria Berry, OMMA executive director, told the committee the rulemaking mirrors statutory language from House Bill 3,361 (2024) and its amendment in House Bill 2,807 (2025), and that OMMA did not add requirements beyond statute. "We did not add anything in our rules that did not come directly from statute," Berry said. She acknowledged the agency did not budget for a contracted economist and that response to OMMA's industry survey was low (about 2% of nearly 5,000 licensees).
Committee members pressed OMMA over a major discrepancy between OMMA's earlier five-year cost estimate (about $118,000) and the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency (LOFT) estimate (roughly $335 million over five years, about $67 million per year). Berry attributed part of the difference to an arithmetic error and to differing analytic scopes — OMMA's internal fiscal impact focused on agency costs, while LOFT attempted to estimate industry costs. She said OMMA implemented emergency rules and began enforcing prepackaging on Nov. 1, 2025, and that enforcement would continue whether or not the committee approved the permanent code language.
Supporters argued the rules merely mirror statute and that rejecting them would cause administrative confusion; opponents warned of a large cost transfer to growers and dispensaries and urged statutory safeguards for independent adjudication. The committee approved SJR 53; the agency committed to seek and, where feasible, provide better cost data for the legislature and committee review.
