Osborn Ad Revives Ricketts' 'Kill Your Kids' Marijuana Claim

Photo by Lara Jameson via Pexels.

On September 25, 2026, Independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn dropped a new ad into Nebraska's already brutal Senate race, and it opens with a line most viewers had probably never heard before: then-Gov. Pete Ricketts, on camera, warning that legalizing marijuana will "kill your kids." The clip is five years old. The race it's now being used in has nothing to do with the bill Ricketts was talking about when he said it. But Osborn's team clearly bet that the sheer bluntness of the quote would stop people mid-scroll, and it's already doing exactly that, resurfacing a fight over medical cannabis that Nebraska voters themselves settled at the ballot box back in 2024.

"

What Ricketts Actually Said, and When

Photo by Pieter van de Sande via Unsplash.

Ricketts made the remark at a press conference in 2021, while he was still governor and Nebraska's unicameral legislature was weighing a medical cannabis bill. He wasn't hedging or qualifying it for a general audience — he told reporters directly that legalizing marijuana would kill kids, framing it as a public health emergency rather than a policy tradeoff. The bill he was fighting died in the legislature that session, which at the time looked like a win for his position. It wasn't the end of the story, though. Nebraska voters, frustrated with lawmakers refusing to act, took the matter directly to the ballot in 2024 and approved medical marijuana through a pair of citizen-initiated measures, effectively overriding the legislative outcome Ricketts had fought to protect. That the clip is surfacing now, five years after the fact and in a completely different campaign, says less about renewed interest in Nebraska cannabis policy and more about how durable a soundbite like that becomes once it's on tape. Osborn's campaign didn't need new material on marijuana policy; they needed footage that captured Ricketts making a sweeping, alarmist claim on camera, and 2021 provided it.

Inside the Osborn Ad: Medicaid, Not Marijuana

Photo by Bruno Massao via Pexels.

Watch the actual ad and the marijuana line disappears almost as quickly as it appears. It's the cold open, the hook, and then the spot pivots hard into Medicaid. The real substance of Osborn's attack is Ricketts' vote for federal Medicaid funding cuts, which Osborn's campaign argues will hit rural hospitals and working-class Nebraska families who rely on the program. The ad also draws a direct line between that vote and the insurance industry money that's flowed into Ricketts' campaign coffers, suggesting the senator's health care votes track more closely with donor interests than constituent needs. In that context, the marijuana quote isn't really about marijuana at all. It's a device — a jarring, almost absurd-sounding claim that primes viewers to question Ricketts' judgment before the ad even gets to its actual policy argument. The implicit logic: if this is the kind of overheated, unsupported claim Ricketts is willing to make publicly, why would voters trust his read on something as consequential as Medicaid funding? It's a classic character-first ad structure, using one outlandish quote to soften up the audience for the harder-edged policy critique that follows.

Ricketts' Anti-Cannabis Record Since Reaching the Senate

Photo by Tomas Martinez via Unsplash.

Ricketts' record since arriving in the Senate suggests the 2021 comment wasn't a one-off. He's been an outspoken opponent of the Trump administration's push to reschedule marijuana under federal law, a move that would loosen restrictions without fully legalizing cannabis nationally. He's also cosponsored legislation designed to keep cannabis businesses locked out of standard federal tax deductions under IRS code 280E, even in a scenario where rescheduling does eventually happen — a provision that would preserve one of the industry's most burdensome financial penalties regardless of how federal scheduling shakes out. Taken together, it's a consistent through-line from the governor's office to Capitol Hill: opposition to cannabis reform hasn't softened with time or with new data, it's simply moved venues. Meanwhile, Nebraska's own attorney general recently abandoned his legal challenge to the state's voter-approved medical cannabis law after losing at the Nebraska Supreme Court, effectively conceding that the 2024 ballot measures are going to stand. That leaves Ricketts increasingly isolated as one of the last prominent Republican voices in the state still fighting the cannabis policy fight on every front available to him, even as the legal and electoral ground under that fight keeps shifting away from his position.

Does the Data Back Up the 'Kill Your Kids' Claim?

All surveyed states with legal cannabis reported a decrease in teen use after legalization, with none reporting an increase—countering claims that legalization drives youth consumption up.

The empirical case behind Ricketts' 2021 warning hasn't aged well. A Marijuana Policy Project report circulating widely this week found that teen marijuana use has declined in every state that has legalized cannabis for adults, a finding that runs directly counter to the premise that legalization opens the door to more youth access and use. It's not an isolated pattern, either. Researchers tracking Colorado and other early-legalization states over the past decade-plus have documented similar trends: regulated adult-use markets, with age verification and licensed retail, haven't produced the surge in underage use that opponents predicted. If anything, some of these states have seen youth use rates fall faster than the national average. That doesn't mean legalization carries zero risk for young people — normalization effects, edible product appeal, and household access are all real concerns worth taking seriously, and parents and policymakers in any state considering reform should look closely at how other jurisdictions have handled packaging, marketing, and enforcement. But the specific claim Ricketts made in 2021 — that legalization itself would kill kids — isn't what the data from actual legalized states shows. It's a talking point that's been used for years to block reform efforts nationally, and it's increasingly out of step with the outcomes in states that have already run the experiment.

A Tight Race Where Cannabis Is Now a Wedge Issue

Photo by mounsey via Pixabay.

This ad isn't landing in a vacuum. Ricketts cruised through the May 12 GOP primary with 81.5% of the vote, a number that looked like a mandate at the time. The general election picture has been far messier. Polling has swung wildly in recent weeks: a Wedgewood survey in mid-September had Ricketts ahead 52-48, while a SurveyUSA poll just days earlier had Osborn leading 46-42, and an Impact Research poll in August found the two dead even at 47% apiece. Ricketts' underlying favorability numbers don't help his case either — he's underwater at 44% favorable to 54% unfavorable, the kind of split that tends to make incumbents nervous regardless of how confident their internal polling looks. Prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket both still put his reelection odds around 70%, so the smart money isn't betting on an upset. But 70% isn't 95%, and in a race this volatile, campaigns are reaching for every wedge issue available. Cannabis has become one of the more reliable ones nationally this cycle — it's shown up in Talarico's challenge to Paxton in Texas and in Holscher's race against Masterson in Kansas, part of a broader 2026 pattern where candidates are using cannabis positions as a proxy for character, judgment, and how in-touch a sitting official is with where voters have already moved.

Strip away the ad's framing and what's really being litigated here isn't cannabis policy at all — Nebraska voters already settled that question in 2024, and the state's own attorney general has stopped fighting it. What Osborn is actually asking voters to weigh is whether a politician who made a sweeping, unsupported claim on camera in 2021, and who's kept pushing variations of that same position ever since, deserves the benefit of the doubt on a much bigger-dollar issue like Medicaid funding. The marijuana quote is doing character work, not policy work. Whether that framing moves votes in a race this tight is the real open question, and it's one Nebraska will answer on November 3.

"

Browse our seed collection.