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The city's ballot file holds 1,998 measures going back to 1907. Five concerned cannabis. Four passed. None of the first four could change a law.
San Francisco has voted on cannabis five times since 1978, and the city's own ballot file can show you each one: the letter, the wording, who put it on the ballot, and the exact vote.
The file is the San Francisco Ballot Propositions Database, 1,998 measures from 1907 through 2024. A search of its titles and descriptions for cannabis terms turns up five measures. The first three were policy declarations placed by petition, which means they told elected officials what voters wanted them to do. They could not change law themselves.
In 1978, Measure W asked the city to stop arresting people for marijuana possession. It passed with 57.0 percent of the vote, 107,561 to 81,169. In 1985, Measure G would have funded a $150,000 campaign to legalize marijuana. It failed at 21.7 percent. In 1991, Measure P, called Hemp Medication, passed at 79.3 percent, the widest margin of the five.
In 2002, the Board of Supervisors placed Measure S, Medical Marijuana, on the ballot as another policy declaration. It passed with 62.0 percent, 127,661 to 78,181, a city-level statement of support for the medical system California voters had created in 1996.
The fifth measure was the first one that could actually change city law. Measure D in November 2018 was an ordinance that added and expanded taxes on cannabis businesses, a gross receipts tax of 1 to 5 percent that took effect in 2021. The board placed it, and it passed with 65.7 percent, 227,250 to 118,815.
Read together, the five votes show a city moving from asking the state to change course to taxing an industry it had already legalized. The file makes the mechanics readable: the kind column says whether a measure was a policy declaration, an ordinance, or a charter amendment, and the how placed column records whether it arrived by petition, by the board, or by another route.
| Year | Measure | What it said | How it got on | Result | Yes share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | W | Cease arrests for marijuana possession | Petition | Passed | 57.0% |
| 1985 | G | Fund $150,000 to legalize marijuana | Petition | Failed | 21.7% |
| 1991 | P | Hemp medication policy | Petition | Passed | 79.3% |
| 2002 | S | Medical marijuana policy | Board of Supervisors | Passed | 62.0% |
| 2018 | D | Tax on cannabis businesses, 1 to 5 percent | Board of Supervisors | Passed | 65.7% |
One reading lesson comes free with the file: the city stores the yes share as a decimal, so 0.5699 means 57.0 percent. The counts column holds the raw votes.
There is no cannabis measure among the letters qualified for the November 3, 2026 ballot in San Francisco. That list is Charter Amendments A through F, Ordinances G through J, and the regional transit measure, per the Department of Elections on September 3, 2026.