Massachusetts Lawmakers Grill Anti-Marijuana Campaign Spokesperson About Ballot Measure To Roll Back Legalization

Massachusetts lawmakers weighing a ballot proposal to roll back the state’s
voter-approved marijuana legalization law had some pointed questions for a
spokesperson representing the anti-cannabis campaign, with several
signaling skepticism about the motivations behind the repeal measure and
its implications for consumers and businesses.

At a hearing before the Joint Committee on Initiative Petitions on Monday,
members took testimony from both sides of the issue as they fulfill state
election law that requires the legislature to review proposed ballot
initiatives for potential action. If they decline to act on the initiative,
the campaign will need to collected a final batch of signatures to secure
placement on the November ballot.

Wendy Wakeman, a spokesperson for the ballot referendum committee
sponsoring “An Act to Restore A Sensible Marijuana Policy,” gave opening
remarks defending the measure, arguing that the marijuana law approved by
voters in 2016 has had a “negative effect on public health, public safety
and public comfort and convenience.”

“The upshot is that legalization of marijuana has not been a net positive
for the citizens of our state,” she said, arguing that increases in THC
potency over the years poses a public health risk, that marijuana use has
been inadequately studied and that “the costs [of legalization] outweigh
the benefits.”

The initiative under review wouldn’t revert the state back to blanket
prohibition; rather, it would repeal the commercial sales components of the
market while still allowing adults 21 and older to possess up to an ounce
of cannabis for personal use.

Possession of more than one ounce but less than two ounces would be
effectively decriminalized, with violators subject to a $100 fine. Adults
could also continue to gift cannabis between each other without
remuneration.

Sen. Barry Finegold (D) was among the committee members who indicated they
aren’t on board with the measure, asking Wakeman how she squares the
proposal with the fact that legalization soundly passed under a ballot
process that allows “the will of the people” to directly influence public
policy—a guiding principle he said “we forget so much about.”

The senator also asked what Wakeman would tell “all the people that
invested all this capital into these businesses and what happens to them.”

The campaign spokesperson replied they were “very tough, very good
questions.” With respect to the first query, she said the measure
represents another opportunity for voters to reassess the merits of the law
and whether “this was a good idea.”

“I’m not asking your chamber to decide, so we’re going back to the voters
again,” she said. “The second question is very difficult. I know many
people have invested a lot of money in building the marijuana business, and
I have a lot of respect for anybody who’s building a business in this
climate. I just believe that the costs outweigh the benefits.”

Sen. Cindy Friedman (D) pressed Wakeman on data she presented that was
framed as evidence that public support for legalization is declining “as we
live with pot shops and open pot smoking in the state.”

The senator noted that the datapoint didn’t appear to be
Massachusetts-specific, which Wakeman acknowledged, adding that she “went
through the data quickly, because data is a funny thing in this debate”
given what she described as broadly inconsistent data about cannabis issues.

“Why doesn’t the [ballot] question then become ‘the state will investigate
and do research and look into this,’ which the state has not been able to
do much of,” Friedman said. “Why isn’t that your ballot question?”

Wakeman said “you’re certainly welcome to do that as a state senator,” but
she wasn’t involved with the referendum committee from the beginning and
couldn’t “speak directly” to the reason the initiative didn’t seek to
further study the issue rather than move straight to repealing a core
component of the existing law.

“I can tell you that this is the question. There are more than 100,000
people in Massachusetts who believe we should roll back the recreational
availability of marijuana,” she said, referring to the number of people who
signed ballot petitions for the measure.

Another member of the joint committee posed a different question to the
spokesperson: If possessing and gifting marijuana between adults would
still be legal under the measure—without a regulated sales
component—wouldn’t that reinstitute a policy gap that’d benefit the illicit
market by driving demand for unregulated products?

“I don’t know the gift thing, but it doesn’t change the criminalization,”
Wakeman said, adding that the potential impact of repealing commercial
sales on the illicit market is a “great question” that she declined to
answer.

She was also unable to directly address questions about the sources of
funding behind the anti-cannabis measure and similar proposals that have
been pursued in other states such as Maine and Arizona this election cycle
that are tangentially affiliated with the national prohibitionist
organization Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) and its 501(c)(4) arm SAM
Action.

She said in a response to another senator that she does believe “the vast
majority of people who use cannabis can do so safely,” but that “doesn’t
mean that we should ignore the fact that a very large portion of the
population is affected in a way that’s so negative that it outweighs the
benefit of having it freely accessible.”

“So, in your opinion, the majority of people can use it safely without
issue—but you’re saying the ills of a very small minority of people is what
outweighs legal use by adults?” the senator asked.

Wakeman said that, upon reflection, “I’ve become more uncomfortable with
that statement” on the relative rates of safe versus unsafe cannabis use.

“I just don’t think we know. The research on cannabis use is scant. We can
all agree on that,” she said. “My friends here will agree, and I will
agree. I believe it. We haven’t lived in a culture that allowed the drug
and its use to be studied, and that is a problem that makes everything we
do surrounding marijuana really flawed.”

Not everyone agrees with that point, the senator pointed out, saying he
feels marijuana use “has been well-studied,” and the research was part of
what “was contemplated when [legalization] originally passed.”

Asked whether there could be remedies to certain of the issues Wakeman
raised around grow operator regulations and THC potency, the spokesperson
said she’s “not an expert on that.”

As far as the illicit market is concerned, she said it’s “obviously not”
going to make it safer to buy unrelated products versus those tested for
retail sale in the regulated space, but she contended that legalization is
associated with its own set of issues such as “extended usage” that’s
“skyrocketed” under the state-level reform.

Opponents of the initiative who testified at the hearing, meanwhile,
defended voters’ decision to replace prohibition with regulations, accusing
the repeal campaign of pursuing an anti-cannabis agenda despite polls
showing continued public support and the commercial market effectively
transitioning consumers away from illicit economy.

To that point, a Bay State Poll from the University of Hampshire’s States
of Opinion Project that was released earlier this month found that a
majority of Massachusetts adults oppose the marijuana sales and cultivation
repeal initiative.

The survey came months after cannabis activists filed a complaint with the
State Ballot Law Commission under the Secretary of State’s office, alleging
that petitioners with the anti-cannabis campaign used misleading tactics to
convince voters to support its ballot placement.

The commission rejected the complaint in January, however, and said
advocates who challenged the ballot measure raised “unsupported
allegations” about the propriety of the signature gathering process that
they said warranted official scrutiny.

In any case, separate polling has found that nearly half of those who
signed the marijuana sales repeal petition felt misled, with many claiming
that the measure was pitched to them as a proposal to address unrelated
issues such as public education and expanded housing.

The anti-marijuana coalition has denied any wrongdoing in the signature
collection process and waved off the survey results.

An association of state marijuana businesses had separately urged voters to
report to local officials if they observe any instances of “fraudulent
message” or other deceitful petitioning tactics.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s (D) office—which cleared
the campaign for signature gathering in September—has stressed to voters
the importance of reading the summary, which is required to go at the top
of the signature form, before signing any petitions.

The Massachusetts legislature received the initiative for consideration
earlier this month when the 2026 session kicked off. Now that the state
election commission has issued its ruling on the complaint, lawmakers have
until May 5 to act on the proposal. If they choose not to enact it
legislatively, the campaign would need to go through another round of
petitioning and get at least 12,429 certified signatures by July 1 to make
the November ballot.

Meanwhile, the head of Massachusetts’s marijuana regulatory agency recently
suggested that the measure to effectively recriminalize recreational
cannabis sales could imperil tax revenue that’s being used to support
substance misuse treatment efforts and other public programs.

To that point, Massachusetts recently reached another marijuana milestone,
with officials announcing last month that the state has surpassed $9
billion in adult-use cannabis purchases since the market launched in 2018.

Massachusetts lawmakers also recently assembled a bicameral conference
committee to reach a deal on a bill that would double the legal marijuana
possession limit for adults and revise the regulatory framework for the
state’s adult-use cannabis market.

In December, state regulators also finalized rules for marijuana social
consumption loungues.


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CCC recently launched an online platform aimed at helping people find jobs,
workplace training and networking opportunities in the state’s legal
cannabis industry.

State lawmakers have also been considering setting tighter restrictions on
intoxicating hemp-derived products and a plan to allow individual entities
to control a larger number of cannabis establishments.

Also in Massachusetts, legislators who were working on a state budget
butted heads with CCC officials, who’ve said they can’t make critical
technology improvements without more money from the legislature.

Massachusetts lawmakers additionally approved a bill to establish a pilot
program for the regulated therapeutic use of psychedelics. And two
committees have separately held hearings to discuss additional
psilocybin-related measures.

*Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.*

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