The 2025 Oregon legislative session adjourned on June 27, 2025. Six bills passed with respect to cannabis. Of these, I covered SB 162 and SB 558 last month in Oregon Cannabis Roundup: June 2025, so please head over to that post if you’d like a full recap. Today I’ll give an extremely brief summary of each of those keys bills, and better explain the other four.
SB 162
This one contains myriad law enforcement provisions, as detailed in last month’s post. It also allows OLCC to extend marijuana license terms from one year to five, which would be great. Finally, it has a “grandfather” provision for retailers that were legislated out of viability by the 1,000 foot radius rule.
SB 347
This is another bill related to law enforcement. It doesn’t appear that Governor Kotek signed (or vetoed) it, but both the Senate President and House Speaker signed, so it’s law at this point.
SB 347 disqualifies land from farm use special assessments (tax incentives), following a final civil penalty or conviction for illegal marijuana growing. The penalty lasts ten years, and there is an exemption if the land owner “reasonably lacked knowledge of the illegal growing of marijuana on the land” or notified law enforcement “as soon as practicable” or “acquired the land in an arms-length transaction in a certain pre-conviction interval.
This bill takes effect 91 days from the end of the session, which is September 26, 2025 by my count.
SB 558
This is the bill industry mostly rallied behind. It loosens sample and seed-sharing restrictions, opens up producer-to-producer marijuana transfers, and a few other things. Check out my fulsome recap in last month’s post.
HB 3274
This one is a technical fix, of sorts. Advertisements that are “appealing to minors” were prohibited for years under the statute and OLCC rules. Now, that problematic legal standard has been revised to prohibit ads and packaging that are “likely to cause minors to unlawfully possess or consume” marijuana items.
OLCC is also now required to create objective criteria for evaluating marketing materials, which should be useful. There’s no perfect solution here—especially given the intersection with Oregon’s robust protections on speech—but the goal is to bring marketing restrictions closer to what we see in the OLCC’s alcohol regime; and to give cannabis operators more latitude on branding.
HB 3372
This bill allows certain exempt well users, including ODA hemp growers and handlers, to use up to 3,000 gallons of groundwater per day to water lawn or gardens up to a half-acre in size. It permits water for growing industrial hemp as per ORS 571.281, but no other cannabis plants. This may help certain small hemp grows.
HB 3825
This new law is not related to the OLCC or ODA milieu. Instead, the tiny bill deals with former criminal convictions for possession of small amounts of marijuana.
Under Oregon law generally, remedies for a judgment in a criminal action expire 20 years after the judgment expires. If someone fully complies with and performs a court sentence, they may apply for an order to set aside certain convictions.
HB 3825 provides that any remedies in a judgment of conviction for possession of less than one ounce of marijuana, that have not yet expired, will expire on the effective date of HB 3825 (which looks to be September 26, 2025). Hopefully that makes a difference for at least a few folks.
HB 3825 also states that if the judgment remedies for any monetary obligations in the judgment of criminal conviction have expired, the person shall be considered to have fully complied with, or performed, the sentence of the court with respect to those monetary obligations.
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So that’s it for 2025. If you want a rundown of all the bills and concepts that didn’t make it through—which are quite a few, on everything from marijuana sales tax increases, to required placement of a marijuana business owner as an OLCC commissioner—I’ll direct you back to my preview post at the start of the session, back in January.
Looking ahead, the next stop for SB 162, SB 558 and HB 3274 should be OLCC rulemaking. Customarily, that kicks off in the fall.
