By George Caldwell (The Washington Times)
Massachusetts will serve as a testing ground on Election Day for whether voters regret marijuana legalization, a decade after the state approved recreational use of the drug.
If Question 8 passes on the Nov. 3 ballot, Massachusetts would be the first state to reverse course on legalization.
Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana — a major anti-marijuana group that has largely financed the ballot initiative — said the effort sends a message to politicians.
“Sometimes you have to put the gun on the table to get taken seriously in a state,” he told The Washington Times.
“We’re not trying to take away people’s individual right to use marijuana. We’re not trying to arrest adults for marijuana,” Mr. Sabet said. “But we are saying that we don’t need to have these pot shops.”
The ballot measure would allow medical marijuana dispensaries to operate. Adults could still possess up to 1 ounce of marijuana without facing a civil penalty.
Question 8 supporters say marijuana legalization has been detrimental to Massachusetts, linking legalization to fatal car accidents, mental illness, workplace injuries and state expenses because of healthcare costs and productivity losses.
Mr. Sabet said he has “realistic” expectations for the initiative’s success.
“We’re polling way behind. The industry has tons of money to throw at this,” he said. “Their livelihood depends on this not passing. But this is the beginning of a conversation. I don’t see this as the endpoint at all.”
A mid-October Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll found that more than 71% of respondents said they intended to vote “no” on the question.
Ryan Dominguez is the head of a cannabis trade association and leads the Stop the Repeal campaign, which runs ads saying that closing pot shops would hurt Massachusetts’ economy and expand the illicit drug market.
He said one of the campaign’s main ways to reach voters is through the cannabis shops themselves, which “hand out our literature” against the question.
Despite the popularity of recreational marijuana in Massachusetts, Mr. Dominguez worries that the ballot question could pass.
He said the question is one of nine on the ballot, raising the possibility that pro-pot voters could skip it.
“We’re actually on the bottom of page two of the ballot, and so if there was any voter fatigue and people just vote for the governor and kind of move on, there could be potential voter drop-off,” he said.
He also worries that some voters have become so used to voting “yes” on pro-cannabis measures that they might vote “yes” on repeal as well, mistakenly thinking they are supporting them.
In the small town of Lee in Massachusetts’ Berkshires region, Select Board Chair Bob Jones sees the industry as a driver of economic activity.
Mr. Jones, who has previously worked part time at one of the stores, said Lee’s two retail stores and one growing facility generate $400,000 to $600,000 in annual revenue for the town.
It pays for “police cruisers, fire trucks, playground equipment, road repair, all of that,” Mr. Jones said. “We’re a small town. We’re a little over 5,700 people. So that kind of money does have a huge impact on our economy, and should it go away, the long-term impact of it would be devastating.”
Mr. Jones called Question 8 “a nuisance, because I don’t see any negative impact from the cannabis use whatsoever.”
On the other side, Stephen Kronberg, a volunteer for Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts’ “yes” campaign, said legalization has been a disaster.
Mr. Kronberg supported legalization in 2016 but says the rise of high-concentration products has changed the situation.
“People’s brains can’t handle it. It’s violently efficient to get people addicted,” he said. “If we don’t do something to look at these high-potency items and what they’re doing to our brains, and the detrimental issues that it’s having with society, it’s only going to get worse.”
After seeing family members abuse cannabis, Mr. Kronberg now works as a recovery coach at Beverly Hospital, helping substance abuse patients.
He says he sees cases in which marijuana use triggers addiction, anxiety and schizophrenia, as well as physical symptoms such as intestinal pain.
He said the cannabis industry costs the state far more than the $280 million in state tax revenue it generated in the 2025 fiscal year.
Jason Reposa, owner of Good Feels Inc., a cannabis beverage manufacturer, is campaigning against the ballot measure on social media and in public.
“Our team is actually very active,” he told The Times. “We are putting out lawn signs. … We are going and doing all of the rallies. … We have buttons, we have posters, we have all kinds of stuff.”
He said having regulated stores take over more of the marijuana market has helped get the drug away from teens and imposed safety standards on products.
“The simple fact is that since we’ve legalized, teen use has gone down,” he said. “Stores check IDs twice. They have a better record than liquor stores in Massachusetts.”
Closing shops, he said, would increase illicit sales of untested products and deprive the state of tax revenue.
Still, anti-marijuana figures argue that legalization has not helped combat black market sales and that repeal would directly address the negative aspects of marijuana use.
“Most people are using it anyway. The underground market is thriving,” Mr. Sabet said. “Also, the stuff that you’re getting at these pot shops, they’re not tested well at all. … These shops have huge issues with mold, pesticides, bacteria.”
Mr. Kronberg concurred: “The illicit market never went away. Ten years of legal sales never ended it. Commercialization just added a store in every town, so if you take away the stores, consumption’s going to naturally go down.”
This article was made available to WMAL via The Washington Times.
