In the first Election Night in years without marijuana legalization on the ballot somewhere in America, Massachusetts voters showed overwhelming support for legal cannabis on Tuesday, soundly rejecting a controversial ballot question that would have ended the state’s $1.65 billion annual industry.
As of after midnight Tuesday, more than 75% of voters said no to Question 8, a costly first-of-its-kind referendum on marijuana legalization backed by the nation’s most prominent anti-cannabis organization.
“Voters told an out-of-state effort that wanted to dismantle a decade of work and replace progress with restrictive policies, ‘No’,” said Ryan Dominguez, executive director of the Massachusetts Cannabis Coalition and the chair of the No on 8 campaign.
Nearly every major elected official, from Gov. Maura Healey to councilmembers in cities where cannabis retail is a mundane sight, opposed Question 8, which threatened $336 million in annual tax revenue and 400 businesses employing nearly 20,000 people.
“Massachusetts voters know that our safe, regulated cannabis market is working,” Dominguez added.
Did Massachusetts support cannabis legalization?
The landslide defeat for cannabis prohibition is an historic swing from 2016, when Massachusetts was one of seven states to legalize adult-use cannabis sales. Then, with legal cannabis in the U.S. still untested outside of a handful of western states, only 53.6% of voters signed onto legal cannabis.
Cannabis reform advocates are hopeful that the overwhelming victory against Question 8, bankrolled almost entirely by the political arm of Washington, D.C.-area dark money nonprofit Smart Approaches to Marijuana, may discourage that organization’s other efforts, such as the lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s marijuana rescheduling efforts.
But instead, in a defiant post on X, SAM Executive Director Kevin Sabet called the drubbing a “victory” and pledged that another SAM-funded cannabis repeal effort in Maine would continue.
“(W)e forced a conversation the high octane THC industry didn’t want to have, and I’m so proud of our team for making history with this first ever vote,” Sabet wrote.
“Hundreds of thousands of voters wanted change- that’s big- and we’re taking that momentum to Maine and beyond! (Remember, it took legalizers 50+ years to score a victory at the ballot box.)”
Who supported marijuana legalization in Massachusetts?
With $3.6 million spent in support to $2.6 million against through Oct. 15, the most recent data available,the quest to repeal Massachusetts’ $1.65 billion annual cannabis industry is this cycle’s most expensive ballot initiative campaign in Massachusetts.
In a sign of both SAM’s willingness to test marijuana legalization with midterm voters as well as what political power could be mustered by the cannabis industry – boosted slightly this year by President Donald Trump’s marijuana rescheduling moves – the cannabis question drew more spending than efforts to change primary voting and tweak firearms laws.
With more than $3.7 million in reported contributions, nearly all of Question 8’s financial support was from SAM Action.
To counter that, opponents of Question 8 raised more than $2.75 million to prevent the first rollback of an adult-use industry.
Major cannabis multistate operators with presences in Massachusetts as well as single-state operators and some ancillary businesses contributed, including:
- INSA, a Chicopee, Mass.-based cannabis retailer, $265,000
- MSO Ascend Wellness, $250,000
- Chicago Atlantic, a major lender to cannabis industry operators, $125,000
- Chicago-based MSO Cresco Labs, $41,875
- Curaleaf Holdings, $241,875
- Fernway, a Massachusetts-based vape cartridge brand, $112,500
- Minnesota-based Vireo Growth, $125,000
- Chicago-based Verano Holding Corp., $150,000
“Despite a well-funded scare campaign, Massachusetts voters have chosen common sense by defeating the ballot initiative to end the state’s legal adult-use cannabis market,” said Adam Smith, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, one of the advocacy organizations behind the adult-use marijuana legalization efforts that swept the country throughout the 2010s.
Smith added: “This outcome shows that Massachusetts voters recognize the true value of regulated cannabis markets: reducing youth access, which means significantly fewer kids using cannabis; safer access for adults to rigorously tested and properly labeled products; plummeting arrest rates, which means fewer lives needlessly disrupted and fewer tax dollars wasted; tens of thousands of new jobs, and hundreds of millions in new revenues; and a recognition of personal liberty and freedom of consciousness.”
How did marijuana legalization repeal qualify for the Massachusetts ballot?
Accusations of voter fraud dogged the campaign to qualify Question 8 for the ballot.
Massachusetts residents last year accused the campaign’s paid signature-gatherers of resorting to deception to lure voters to sign petitions, according to several accounts.
This breaking story will be updated.
