Oklahoma's Cannabis Regulator Exits With 1,703 Growers Left and a DEA Registration Cliff Ahead

Jason Yingling spent 13 years with the Oklahoma County Sheriff's Office, rising to lieutenant in the patrol division and serving on its tactical team. He became a certified national instructor in the Drug Recognition Expert program. Then he joined the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, graduated with its 63rd academy class and spent six years with Troop F in Ardmore running background investigations and teaching recruits. In 2022 he went to work at the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, where he became deputy chief of compliance and enforcement. (S1)

On Wednesday, October 21, Gov. Kevin Stitt's office in Oklahoma City announced that Yingling would run the agency. Adria Berry, OMMA's executive director since 2021, was stepping down "to pursue new opportunities," the release said, while keeping her cabinet post as secretary of licensing and regulation through the end of Stitt's term. Yingling would serve as interim director for the same stretch. (S1)

"It is an honor to continue to serve my state in this capacity," Yingling said in the statement. "I look forward to continuing her work here." The work he inherits has a deadline attached. Starting January 1, 2027, Oklahoma's drug bureau has said it may begin moving against the state registrations of medical marijuana growers and processors that lack a federal Drug Enforcement Administration registration, a rule MJBizDaily reported in May was believed to be the first of its kind among state agencies. (S1, S2, S10)

Berry leaves behind a market her agency spent five years shrinking on purpose. OMMA's own licensing tables show 9,402 licensed growers on December 3, 2021, and 1,703 on October 1, 2026, a drop of about 82%. Commercial licenses of every kind fell from 13,785 to 3,581 over the same span. Patient licenses slid from 384,500 to 304,186. Receipts from the state's medical marijuana excise tax for January through September 2026 came to $32.0 million, about 7% below the same months of 2025. (S3)

What happens next turns on two dates. On November 3, Oklahomans elect Stitt's successor, choosing between a Republican who has promised to make growing more expensive and a Democrat who has promised to veto any attempt to recriminalize medical marijuana. Fifty-nine days later, the federal registration rule starts to bite on whoever is still licensed. (S6, S7, S2)

Oklahoma voters legalized medical marijuana with State Question 788 in June 2018, and the original system set no limits on how many growers, sellers or patients could take part. The result became a cautionary tale for other states. In 2023, according to The Oklahoman, an OMMA-commissioned study found the state was producing 64 times more marijuana than its licensed patients needed, with much of the surplus presumed to be flowing into illegal markets. (S7, S5)

Under Berry, OMMA became a standalone agency, imposed seed-to-sale tracking through Metrc and worked alongside the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control and other law enforcement. Grower counts fell every year: 7,086 in December 2022, 5,041 in December 2023, 3,029 in December 2024, 2,399 in December 2025. The decline has not stopped in 2026. Oklahoma had 2,261 licensed growers on January 2 and 1,703 by October 1, a loss of 558 in nine months. Licensed testing labs fell from 19 to 13 over the same months. (S3, S5)

The retail and processing tiers shrank too. Dispensary licenses fell from 2,519 in December 2021 to 1,259 this October, and processor licenses from 1,713 to 557. The state's medical marijuana excise tax brought in $51.0 million in 2023, $50.5 million in 2024 and $45.3 million in 2025. OMMA's tables note that the agency receives none of the separate state and local sales tax, which totaled $41.6 million through September. (S3)

Then came federal rescheduling. On April 28, 2026, the Justice Department moved marijuana covered by a state medical license into Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. Operators that applied for DEA registration within 60 days could keep operating while the agency reviewed them, and the DEA was told to make every effort to process those applications within six months. Elsewhere, MJBizDaily reported, registration was generally understood to be optional, a choice operators weighed against its costs. (S2, S10)

Oklahoma made it mandatory. On May 8, OBN Director Donnie Anderson sent a two-page letter to every marijuana business holding a bureau registration. Because state-licensed medical marijuana is now a Schedule III substance, he wrote, "every registrant who is a distributor or manufacturer of medical marijuana products must comply with federal law and, as such, shall be required to obtain a DEA registration." Failing to do so could bring sanctions "up to and including the potential revocation" of the business's OBN registration. The bureau said it would not consider administrative action until January 1, 2027, and urged registrants to apply inside the federal 60-day window. (S2)

How many of Oklahoma's 1,703 growers and 557 processors made that window is not public. MJBizDaily reported this week that while the DEA has inspected operators, it is unclear whether any medical marijuana business in the country has yet received a DEA registration. If the federal agency is still processing applications when the new year arrives, Oklahoma's growers will be relying on the pending-application shield OBN's letter describes. (S7, S3, S2)

Berry herself sounded unsure in May. "These announcements have created a lot of questions, but very few answers have been received," she said in OMMA guidance that week, according to Marijuana Moment, and encouraged licensees to get professional counsel. Five months later, her farewell statement struck a more triumphant note. (S8)

“Having his support as we built a regulatory structure that reigned in the 'Wild West of Weed' made it possible to root out bad actors and make our state safer.”

— Adria Berry, Executive Director, Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, Oct. 21, 2026 statement

Her boss wants to go further. In his final State of the State address in February, Stitt asked lawmakers to send medical marijuana back to voters. "Send the marijuana issue back to the vote of the people and shut it down," he said, according to Marijuana Moment. On March 3 he wrote on social media that the state's marijuana "experiment" had failed and that it was "time to shut this broken system down." Stitt said in October that Berry "navigated a complex industry with grit and professionalism" and has a "clear track record of results." (S8, S1)

The Legislature has not followed. Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton, a Republican, initially sounded open to the idea, then said it would be unfair to operators who "invested their life savings into this program." "It's hard to unring that bell," he said, according to Marijuana Moment, proposing more regulation instead of a state question. House Speaker Kyle Hilbert has largely dismissed the idea. Attorney General Gentner Drummond said he would "love" to see the program wiped out but warned the state might have to reimburse licensees for taking away their revenue. Chris Anoatubby, lieutenant governor of the Chickasaw Nation, sided with Stitt, saying the program as run has "been a problem all over Oklahoma." (S8)

The candidates to replace Stitt have split the difference. Democrat Cyndi Munson, a state lawmaker and Stitt critic, told The Oklahoman she would veto any effort to recriminalize medical marijuana. "If there are illegal grows or criminal activity, those should be shut down, but patients and legitimate businesses should not be treated like criminals for following the law," she said, as quoted by MJBizDaily. Republican Mike Mazzei, endorsed by President Donald Trump, has pledged to "jack up the cost of a marijuana grow" on his first day, but according to the same reporting he has not embraced Stitt's call for recriminalization. (S7)

Oklahomans for Responsible Cannabis Action, which dropped an adult-use initiative last year, called Stitt's February demand "simply an admission of his administration's failure," arguing his appointees let illegal grows multiply. Critics also point to problems Berry's crackdown did not fix, including commercial lab "shopping," which MJBizDaily attributes largely to the lack of a working state reference laboratory. (S8, S7)

1. October 30, 2026: Berry's last day at OMMA, according to the governor's office as reported by The Oklahoman.
2. November 3, 2026: Oklahoma elects a governor; Mazzei and Munson have both rejected full recriminalization.
3. January 1, 2027: OBN may begin administrative action against medical marijuana manufacturers and distributors without DEA registration.
4. January 2027: Stitt's term ends and the next governor chooses a permanent OMMA director.
5. August 2028: the moratorium on new Oklahoma business licenses expires, according to MJBizDaily, unless extended again.

None of this is Yingling's to decide on his own. Stitt's release casts him as the man to "continue OMMA's work to keep bad actors out of our state," and his background is enforcement, from sheriff's patrol to highway troopers to OMMA's compliance division. For about 10 weeks he will run an agency whose biggest regulatory event, the January 1 registration line, belongs to another agency, and whose future depends on an election he has no part in. (S1, S2)

In his statement, Yingling said he was proud of what OMMA had done to protect Oklahomans and grateful to Stitt for trusting him with the job. The question the 1,703 remaining growers will be asking in January is whose work he will be continuing by then: the outgoing governor's, who wants the program shut down, or the next one's, who has promised not to. (S1, S3)

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