Drug Policy Watch · State Brief 2026

Wyoming

Snapshot (structured)

Adult-use cannabis: Illegal. No legalization enacted; possession of usable amounts is a misdemeanor and being under the influence is separately punishable.
Medical cannabis: None. Wyoming has no medical cannabis program. A narrow exception permits CBD/hemp-extract oil for intractable epilepsy, but there is no in-state dispensing.
Home grow: Illegal. No personal cultivation allowance for adult-use or medical.
Intoxicating hemp / hemp THC: Heavily restricted. Wyoming banned delta-8 and similar THC derivatives effective July 1, 2024 (with a limited beverage carve-out); the 10th Circuit upheld the ban in late 2025. Industrial hemp under 0.3 percent THC remains legal.
Psychedelics: Illegal. Psilocybin and other psychedelics are controlled; no decriminalization or therapeutic-access law.
Broad decriminalization: No. Wyoming has not decriminalized cannabis or other drugs.
Harm reduction: Minimal. A Good Samaritan overdose-immunity law passed in 2025; naloxone is available via pharmacist and over the counter. No authorized syringe services; fentanyl test strip legality is ambiguous.
Governor (party): Mark Gordon (Republican); term-limited and not seeking a third term, so a new governor takes office in January 2027.
Legislature control: Republican supermajority in both chambers (Senate roughly 29 of 31 R; House roughly 56 of 62 R as of 2025). Republican trifecta.
Citizen ballot initiatives allowed: Yes, but with the highest signature burden in the nation. No cannabis or drug measure currently qualified.
Enclosure pressure score: 5/5

Cannabis

Wyoming is one of a shrinking number of states with neither adult-use nor medical cannabis. Recreational and medical marijuana are both illegal, and no healthcare provider may recommend cannabis for any condition. The only carve-out is for hemp-derived CBD oil for intractable epilepsy, which has no in-state licensed supply, so patients source it themselves, typically out of state (WyomingCannabis.org laws page; MPP Wyoming).

There is no home grow allowance.

On the legalization debate: the high-water mark was 2021, when a House Judiciary Committee advanced an adult-use legalization bill (HB0209) sponsored by Judiciary Chair Jared Olsen and cosponsored by then-House leadership. It would have allowed adults 21 and older to possess up to three ounces and grow up to 12 plants, with a 30 percent tax. It cleared committee 6-3 but did not become law (Marijuana Moment, 2021). Since then, lawmakers have not advanced cannabis reform in the 2023, 2024, 2025, or 2026 sessions (WyomingCannabis.org).

The dominant 2026 political fact is opposition from the state Republican Party. The party has listed "No Legalization of Marijuana" among its legislative priorities and reaffirmed an anti-legalization stance even amid the federal rescheduling conversation; coverage in late 2025 framed Trump-era rescheduling momentum as unlikely to move Wyoming's GOP (Cowboy State Daily, Dec 2025; Wyoming GOP 2025 priorities).

Key 2026 action: a minority-sponsored bill, HB0166 ("Marijuana-class III substance"), would amend marijuana's scheduling, with an effective date listed as July 1, 2026 in the bill text. Reported sponsors are Representatives Provenza, Posey, and Singh and Senators Case and Rothfuss (wyoleg.gov 2026 HB0166). As a non-budget bill in a budget session it would have needed a two-thirds vote just to be introduced; its final disposition is unconfirmed from the sources reviewed, but consistent with the pattern, it did not produce a change in law. Treat the sponsor list and status as unconfirmed pending the official bill page.

Hemp

Industrial hemp (under 0.3 percent THC) is legal to grow and sell in Wyoming, which legalized hemp products in 2019. After 2018, smoke shops built a large trade in intoxicating delta-8 products. Following 2024 reports of students in Cody getting sick, lawmakers banned delta-8 and two other THC derivatives effective July 1, 2024, in most formats (flower, gummies, vapes, tinctures) with a notable carve-out for beverages, which the legislature treated like its alcohol framework (WyoFile, Nov 2025; WyoFile, ban advances).

Hemp shops sued, arguing delta-8 regulation was a federal matter; they lost in U.S. District Court and then at the 10th Circuit in late 2025, which upheld Wyoming's ban (MJBizDaily; WyoFile, Oct 2025). At least one Casper hemp dispensary, the Green Room, announced it would close at the end of 2025.

Federal exposure and the November 12, 2026 deadline: Congress redefined "hemp" in the Continuing Appropriations Act for fiscal 2026 (Section 781), signed November 12, 2025, with a one-year delay. Effective November 12, 2026, the federal definition shifts to a total-THC standard and caps final-form hemp products at 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container, banning most intoxicating hemp products and synthetic cannabinoids (Vicente LLP; DLA Piper; Congressional Research Service IN12620). For Wyoming this federal cap would close the remaining hemp-THC edible and beverage trade that survived the state's delta-8 ban. The pending 2026 Farm Bill, advanced by the House Agriculture Committee on March 5, 2026, has left the intoxicating-hemp ban intact (Cannabis Business Times).

Psychedelics

Psilocybin and other psychedelics remain illegal controlled substances in Wyoming. There is no decriminalization measure and no therapeutic- or supervised-access program (Mushroom Laws by State). No 2026 psychedelics bill was identified in the sources reviewed; if any exists it did not advance. This is reported as "unconfirmed absence" rather than a verified negative.

Broader drug policy

Decriminalization: Wyoming has not decriminalized cannabis or any other drug. Possession remains a criminal offense and being under the influence is separately chargeable (MPP Wyoming).

Harm reduction: - Good Samaritan: Until Senate File 0074 passed in 2025, Wyoming was the last state with no overdose Good Samaritan protection. SF0074 grants limited immunity to a person who in good faith seeks emergency help for an overdose, capped at up to two qualifying calls per calendar year, with conditions to remain on scene (WyoFile; wyoleg 2025 SF0074; CDC Foundation). - Naloxone: Wyoming statutes (35-4-901 et seq., effective 2017) authorize pharmacist prescribing and lay/first-responder access; naloxone is also available over the counter. In May 2026 the state launched an online tool to help residents find no-cost Narcan (County 17, May 2026; Wyoming DOH overdose response). - Syringe services: There is no authorized syringe services program in Wyoming; state law and funding gaps have stymied implementation (WyoFile; NEXT Distro Wyoming). - Fentanyl test strips: Statute does not explicitly outlaw possession, but their status is ambiguous and they are not widely distributed; legality is best described as unsettled (WyoFile).

Sentencing and fentanyl: Fentanyl is a Schedule II substance in Wyoming. A 2026 measure, SF0009, is reported to address enhanced penalties for distributing fentanyl to minors; details and final status are unconfirmed (wyoleg 2026 SF0009).

Expungement: Wyoming offers petition-based expungement for certain offenses under existing statute, but there is no cannabis-specific automatic relief, since the state has never legalized. No automatic record-sealing for drug convictions was identified.

Political landscape

Governor: Mark Gordon (Republican). He is term-limited and will not seek a third term, so a new governor takes office in January 2027 (KOTA, Apr 2026; 2026 Wyoming gubernatorial election).

Party control: Republicans hold a supermajority in both chambers, reported as roughly 29 of 31 Senate seats and 56 of 62 House seats as of 2025, with a Republican trifecta and triplex (Ballotpedia, party control).

Key committees: cannabis and controlled-substance bills run through the House and Senate Judiciary Committees; hemp/agriculture matters touch the Agriculture committees; tax-and-revenue framing (a 2021 legalization bill carried a 30 percent tax) implicates Revenue. Exact 2026 chair names are unconfirmed in the sources reviewed.

Reform champions and opponents: - Champions: the 2026 marijuana-scheduling bill HB0166 was reportedly carried by minority-party legislators (Reps. Provenza, Posey, Singh; Sens. Case, Rothfuss), names unconfirmed pending the official bill page. The most prominent past Republican sponsor of legalization was then-Rep. Jared Olsen (2021). Wyoming NORML is the leading outside advocacy voice (Wyoming NORML). - Opponents: the Wyoming Republican Party is the dominant institutional opponent, formally prioritizing "No Legalization of Marijuana." National prohibition group Smart Approaches to Marijuana has testified against Wyoming legalization. On hemp, U.S. Senate Republicans (notably Sen. Mitch McConnell at the federal level) drove the intoxicating-hemp ban (Cowboy State Daily; WyoFile hemp).

Ballot initiatives

Wyoming allows citizen-initiated statutes, but the bar is the highest in the country: signatures equal to 15 percent of votes cast in the last general election, distributed across two-thirds of counties, with an 18-month collection window. For 2026 the threshold was about 40,669 signatures (Ballotpedia signature requirements; Ballotpedia initiative laws).

The November 2026 ballot will carry one citizen initiative, the first in 30 years, but it is a 50 percent homeowner property-tax exemption, not a drug measure (Ballotpedia property tax initiative.

Equity and expungement

Because Wyoming has no legal cannabis market, there are no social-equity licensing provisions, no equity license categories, and no cannabis-specific expungement program. Petition-based expungement exists for some offenses under general criminal statute, but there is no automatic sealing for drug convictions and no relief tied to legalization. The practical effect is that prior cannabis and drug convictions carry forward with no dedicated remedy. (No source documenting a Wyoming cannabis equity or auto-expungement program was found; this is reported as absence.)

Market and barriers

There is no legal adult-use or medical cannabis market, so there are no license fees, license caps, tax rates, residency requirements, or licensee counts to report for cannabis. The only legal cannabinoid commerce is non-intoxicating hemp/CBD (under 0.3 percent THC) plus the narrow beverage carve-out that survived the delta-8 ban, and even that beverage and edible trade is exposed to the federal 0.4 milligram per container cap taking effect November 12, 2026 (WyoFile; Vicente LLP). Pre-ban, individual hemp shops reported delta-8 lines making up roughly 70 percent of sales and monthly delta-8 revenue around 20,000 dollars at one Torrington store, an indicator of the size of the trade now being squeezed out (WyoFile).

Enclosure read

Wyoming is not a state where a few license-holders are consolidating a legal market, because there is no legal market to consolidate. The fencing here runs the other way: prohibition itself is the fence. The people fenced out are Wyoming patients (no medical program, no in-state supply), Wyoming consumers (who must cross into Colorado), and the small hemp retailers and farmers who built a legal delta-8 business and then lost it to a state ban upheld by the 10th Circuit, soon to be compounded by the federal hemp cap. The consolidators in this picture sit largely outside Wyoming: the legal cannabis industry in neighboring states that captures Wyoming demand, pharmaceutical interests, and the federal actors who wrote the hemp ban. Hemp vendors themselves frame the squeeze as Big Pharma and alcohol crowding out small operators.

Justification for 5/5 (corrected July 18, 2026; an earlier version of this brief scored Wyoming 2): under the July 2026 re-score, a state with no legal market is a fully enclosed state. Wyoming has no medical program, no adult-use market, no home grow, and a hemp ban that wiped out the small operators who had built a legal business, state law first with the federal cap arriving behind it. The fence here is not held by a corporate licensee; it is held by prohibition itself, and it closes access for everyone. A commons no one can lawfully enter is not an unenclosed commons. It is the most complete enclosure there is.

What to watch next

November 12, 2026: federal hemp redefinition and the 0.4 milligram per container cap take effect, ending most remaining hemp-THC edible and beverage sales in Wyoming. One-year advocacy window closes (Vicente LLP).
November 3, 2026 general election: the property-tax initiative is on the ballot (not drug policy), and a new governor is elected to replace term-limited Gordon, which could shift the executive posture in 2027.
2027 general session: the next non-budget session, where reform bills do not face the two-thirds introduction hurdle, is the realistic next window for a substantive cannabis or hemp bill. Confirm exact convening date with the legislature.
Track HB0166 and SF0009 final dispositions on the official bill pages; sponsor and status details remain unconfirmed here.

Regulators

Cannabis: no dedicated regulator, since there is no legal market. Controlled-substance scheduling and enforcement sit with the state under Title 35, Chapter 7, with the Board of Pharmacy and the office of the commissioner of drugs and substance control referenced in scheduling rulemaking.
Hemp: the Wyoming Department of Agriculture administers the state hemp program (licensing, under-0.3-percent-THC plant rules); product bans flow from statute.
Overdose, naloxone, and treatment: Wyoming Department of Health, Public Health Division (substance abuse, suicide prevention, and opioid response programs).
Elections and ballot initiatives: Wyoming Secretary of State.

Federal exposure (2026)

Wyoming is a prohibition state, so most of the 2026 federal cannabis machinery passes it by, while the federal hemp cliff lands squarely on it.

Rescheduling and 280E: The DOJ/DEA order signed April 22, 2026 and effective April 28, 2026 (91 FR 22714) moved only FDA-approved cannabis drugs and state-licensed MEDICAL cannabis to Schedule III, leaving recreational cannabis in Schedule I. The order's headline relief is ending Section 280E for that medical category, which lets state-licensed medical operators deduct ordinary business expenses. Wyoming has neither a medical nor an adult-use program, so it has no state-licensed cannabis businesses that could ever fall into the medical carve-out. The 280E relief is therefore moot in Wyoming: there is no operator to relieve. The federal carve-out does nothing for a prohibition state, because the benefit attaches to a state license that Wyoming does not issue. Schedule III also does not legalize cannabis, does not authorize interstate commerce, and does not cover state-market businesses, so even the symbolic federal shift gives Wyoming reformers no new legal handhold (DOJ press release; Foley Hoag; MPP rescheduling Q&A). The broader DEA rescheduling hearing opened June 29, 2026 and may slip to 2027, but even a full Schedule III outcome would not change Wyoming's status as a state with no legal cannabis market (Gibson Dunn).

The November 12, 2026 hemp cliff: This is Wyoming's single most consequential federal lever. The FY2026 agriculture appropriations measure (Section 781, reported sponsor Rep. Andy Harris, R-MD, attribution unconfirmed pending the official text) narrowed "hemp" to a total-THC standard, capping final-form products at roughly 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container, effective November 12, 2026. The threatened delay (reported as H.R.7010, unconfirmed) was not enacted, and the 2026 Farm Bill (reported as H.R.7567, unconfirmed) keeps the ban in place. This recriminalizes an estimated 90 to 95 percent of intoxicating hemp products nationally. Wyoming had already banned delta-8 and similar derivatives effective July 1, 2024, a ban upheld by the 10th Circuit in late 2025, so the federal rule does not open new ground here, it reinforces and finishes the state's own crackdown. Practical effect: the narrow beverage carve-out and any residual hemp-THC edibles that survived the state ban now face a federal cap they cannot meet, closing essentially all remaining hemp-THC trade in the state. What survives is non-intoxicating hemp and CBD under the older limits (Vicente LLP; DLA Piper; Congressional Research Service IN12620; WyoFile).

Banking: Not applicable. SAFER Banking stalled at the federal level, but Wyoming has no licensed cannabis businesses that would need depository or payment-processing access, so the banking question has no Wyoming subject. If the state ever legalized, the stalled bill would matter, but today there is nothing to bank.

Psychedelics: None in-state. Psilocybin, MDMA, and ibogaine remain Schedule I federally, and an April 2026 executive order plus FDA priority vouchers are fast-tracking FDA review with no approval yet. Wyoming has no decriminalization or therapeutic-access law of its own, so any future Wyoming access would arrive only through the federal FDA route, not state action. The federal channel is the only realistic path here, and it has produced no approved medicine yet ([federal psychedelics context, see Sources]).

Harm reduction: Minimal and now more exposed. Wyoming's 2025 Good Samaritan law (Senate File 0074) is its main harm-reduction gain, granting limited overdose-call immunity. Naloxone remains supported federally and is available over the counter and via the state's 2026 no-cost Narcan tool. The exposure is on the supply side: SAMHSA guidance issued April 24, 2026 bars federal funds for fentanyl test strips, clean syringes, and sterile water, while still supporting naloxone. Wyoming already has no authorized syringe services and an ambiguous fentanyl-test-strip status, so the SAMHSA cut removes a federal funding path the state was not heavily using but would have needed to stand up any future syringe or test-strip program (WyoFile fentanyl; wyoleg 2025 SF0074).

Patient access and rights

This section covers what Wyoming law does and does not protect for a medical cannabis patient: use inside a hospital, and the broader rights that follow a patient into work, housing, parenting, an organ transplant list, and school. It is information, not legal advice, and it reflects the law as of July 2026. Each point links to the primary statute.

Wyoming has no comprehensive medical cannabis program. State law allows only CBD, under the 2015 Supervised Medical Use of Hemp Extracts law at Wyoming Statutes Section 35-7-1901 and following, and only for certain patients. It is a narrow allowance, not a program.

Hospital access (Ryan's Law): Wyoming has no hospital-access law. No statute requires a hospital or similar facility to let a patient use medical cannabis on site, so the decision is left to each facility's own policy. Seven states have now enacted a Ryan's Law protection (California in 2021, and Colorado, Delaware, Louisiana, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington in 2026), with Pennsylvania's bill pending; Wyoming is not among them.

Broader protections: here the absence is the finding. A review of Wyoming law found no statutory protection for a medical cannabis patient in any of the areas other states cover: not employment, not housing, not a custody or visitation dispute, not placement on an organ transplant list, and not school enrollment, and there is no general medical-care protection. In these situations the patient has no enforceable shield; the protection does not exist in state law today.

Out-of-state patients: Wyoming has no medical program and does not recognize other states' medical cannabis cards.

The federal picture: the April 2026 federal move of state-licensed medical cannabis to Schedule III did not change any of this. Schedule III does not make dispensary cannabis a lawful prescription medicine, and it creates no hospital-use right and no employment, housing, custody, transplant, or school protection; only state law can create those, and Wyoming has not.

Sources: Wyoming's Supervised Medical Use of Hemp Extracts law, Wyoming Statutes Section 35-7-1901.

Analysis: the enclosure read in depth

Who is fenced out in Wyoming: In a legal-market state, the fence is the license, and the people fenced out are applicants who cannot get one. In Wyoming the fence is prohibition itself. There is no license to win, so the fenced-out population is everyone who would participate in a legal market: patients with no medical program and no in-state supply, adult consumers who cross into Colorado or Montana, and the small hemp retailers and farmers who built a delta-8 business, lost it to the 2024 state ban and the 10th Circuit, and now lose the remainder to the November 12, 2026 federal cap. The gatekeeper is not a regulator rationing licenses, it is a Republican supermajority (reported as roughly 29 of 31 Senate seats and 56 of 62 House seats) that holds a formal "No Legalization of Marijuana" position, reaffirmed even as federal rescheduling advanced (Cowboy State Daily; Ballotpedia party control).

State-plus-federal interaction: Wyoming is the clearest case of federal prohibition reinforcing state prohibition rather than cutting against it. The April 2026 medical carve-out and 280E relief route benefits around state-licensed operators Wyoming does not have, so the federal "loosening" bypasses the state entirely. Meanwhile the November 2026 federal hemp cap layers on top of an already-upheld state ban, doubling the legal weight against the one cannabinoid trade Wyoming had. The vectors point the same direction: both levels of government close the market. There is no federal-state conflict to exploit, which is exactly what makes the prohibition stable.

What to watch: the 2027 general session, the first non-budget session where reform bills escape the two-thirds introduction hurdle, is the realistic next window; the January 2027 arrival of a new governor after term-limited Gordon could shift executive posture; and the practical fallout of the November 12, 2026 hemp cliff on remaining Wyoming retailers. Watch also whether any group attempts the ballot route despite the nation's highest signature burden (about 40,669 signatures, distributed across two-thirds of counties).

The contested-commons counter-move: Any future Wyoming initiative, legislative or ballot, would be a move to reopen a commons that prohibition has fenced. The counter-move that fits Wyoming's terrain is a citizen initiative, because the legislature is structurally closed by the GOP supermajority's formal stance. But the initiative path is itself heavily fenced by the highest signature threshold in the country and an 18-month window, and no cannabis or psychedelic measure has qualified for 2026. A realistic commons play would more likely start with a medical-only framing aimed at the 2027 session or a later ballot cycle, since medical access polls better and now carries a federal Schedule III tailwind for any state that creates licensees, the one place the April 2026 order could eventually matter for Wyoming if the state ever acts.

Justifying the 5/5 score and the open-versus-prohibition distinction: An earlier version of this brief scored Wyoming low on the theory that enclosure measures regulatory capture, and that a state with no legal market has nothing to capture. The July 2026 re-score resolved that question the other way, and this page now carries the corrected score. The underlying distinction still matters, because an open market and a prohibition state are different failure modes. An open market scores low because access is genuinely available to many participants with few capture mechanisms. Wyoming is the opposite case: patients have no program, consumers have no market, growers have no legal crop, and the small hemp retailers who briefly had a lawful business were eliminated by a state ban upheld by the 10th Circuit, with the federal cap arriving behind it. When the community cannot reach the resource at all, the commons is not unenclosed. It is fully fenced, and the fence-holder is the state rather than a favored few. That is why a no-access state now scores 5, the top of the scale, alongside states enclosed by capture. The fence being total and indiscriminate does not soften the score; it is the reason for it.

Active legislation (2026)

The 2026 budget session ran roughly February 9 to early March 2026. In a budget session, non-budget bills require a two-thirds vote just to be introduced, which sharply limits reform bills. None of the items below is confirmed to have changed Wyoming law.

Bill	Title/Topic	Chamber	Status	Sponsor(s)
HB0166	"Marijuana-class III substance"; amends marijuana scheduling/use, effective date listed July 1 2026	House	Did not become law; exact disposition unconfirmed (likely failed introduction/committee in budget session)	Reported: Reps. Provenza, Posey, Singh; Sens. Case, Rothfuss (unconfirmed)
SF0009	Fentanyl-related penalties (reported: distribution to minors)	Senate	Status unconfirmed	Unconfirmed

This list is not exhaustive. For the full and current picture, see the live trackers: Wyoming Legislature 2026 session, LegiScan Wyoming, and Marijuana Moment bill tracker.

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A planning snapshot for 2026, not legal advice. Policy moves quickly; confirm any single detail against the cited sources before acting on it. Sponsor names are given where confirmable and marked unconfirmed otherwise.

About the author. Jessica Mantonya is the founder of Drug Policy Watch and Hold in Common. She also advises operators, advocates, and funders on regulatory strategy and anti-enclosure positioning. Work with her →