Nearly Half Of Massachusetts Voters Who Signed Anti-Marijuana Initiative Petitions Feel Misled By Campaign Workers, Poll Finds

Massachusetts marijuana legalization rollback. Say it out loud and you can taste the ash—bitter, old-school, a throwback to the days when a joint could wreck your week. That’s the headline creeping toward the ballot after a new poll of more than 2,300 residents who signed the repeal petition found that nearly half say they were misled about what they were endorsing. The tally is stark: 1,163 signers said they wouldn’t have supported putting the measure on the ballot had they known it aimed to undo commercial cannabis sales; 601 say they signed with eyes wide open; another 153 didn’t realize the anti-cannabis intent but would have backed it anyway. In the gritty, transactional theater of signature gathering, this is the part where the lights come up and everyone squints—was this democratic sausage-making, or just a street hustle in polite clothes?

How we got here

Petitioners for the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts hauled in 78,301 certified signatures, enough to clear the first hurdle. Now, state officials are reviewing complaints that some canvassers steered voters with deceptive pitches—education funding here, fentanyl there, housing everywhere—anything but marijuana. The coalition denies wrongdoing and waves off the poll as political PR. Their spokesperson told the Boston Globe that pro-cannabis voices were “crybabies” profiting off the market and not owed sympathy, a quote that hones like a chef’s knife and leaves the same sting (source). Counsel for the campaign calls the survey “misleading” and says the numbers wouldn’t invalidate the petition even if they were real. Meanwhile, the Ballot Law Commission is fast-tracking a ruling on the deception complaints, because in this town, nothing burns hotter than a fight over who gets to call something “sensible.”

What’s at stake

The measure—titled “An Act to Restore a Sensible Marijuana Policy”—would keep simple adult possession and gifting up to one ounce legal but drop the guillotine on the commercial market and home cultivation. Medical cannabis would survive; the adult-use industry would not. That’s not a tweak. That’s ripping out the scaffolding of the Massachusetts cannabis economy and telling the crew to keep working on thin air. The state’s top cannabis regulator has already warned that ending retail sales would imperil tax revenue funding substance-use treatment and other public programs. And the market isn’t some fledgling experiment anymore—it’s an ecosystem with real jobs, mortgages, and ledgers backed by billions in legal cannabis revenue. If you’re counting dollars and consequences, here’s the quick tour:

• Certified signatures to advance the measure: 78,301
• Poll results: nearly half of signers report feeling misled; 1,163 say they wouldn’t have supported ballot placement knowing it repeals sales; 601 intended to sign; 153 would have signed even if they knew
• What would remain legal: adult possession and gifting up to one ounce; the medical program
• What would be repealed: commercial adult-use sales and home cultivation
• Market scale: $1.65 billion in adult-use sales in 2025; more than $10 billion in total legal sales since launch
• Public finance risk: loss of cannabis taxation streams that support treatment and other programs

The political trench lines

The legislature has the first swing until May 5. If lawmakers don’t act, repeal forces must collect at least 12,429 more certified signatures by July 1 to make the November ballot. That’s happening as Massachusetts simultaneously finalizes rules for social consumption lounges and debates a bill to double the possession limit—two steps forward, one dramatic lunge back. It’s also part of a broader national pattern: rollback movements fueled by hidden wallets and message discipline that would make a Madison Avenue fixer blush, the sort of playbook we’ve seen detailed in ‘Dark Money’ Anti-Marijuana Group Is Bankrolling Ballot Measures To Roll Back Legalization In Multiple States, Records Show. On another front, the hemp delta gray zone churns as retailers lobby to slow-walk federal crackdowns—see the regulatory tug-of-war captured in Alcohol Retailers Push Congress To Delay Hemp THC Ban While Regulations Are Crafted. And if you want to understand where public sentiment is drifting beyond the cannabis frame, note the quiet mainstreaming of psychedelics, with tens of millions dabbling at the margins of prohibition—context that comes alive in 10 Million US Adults Microdosed Psychedelics Last Year, New Report Shows. Call it a cultural rebranding of altered states, and a warning: policy vacuums will be filled, one way or another.

Read the fine print, then decide

Ballots are blunt instruments. They carry the weight of hope and the risk of buyer’s remorse. If this repeal fight makes you nostalgic for the era when getting bounced from a bar for lighting up was a badge of honor, you’ll appreciate the chaotic charm of Woody Harrelson Got Kicked Out Of Two Bars For Smoking Marijuana With Matthew McConaughey’s Mom. But policy is different from folklore. It’s jobs, tax receipts, inspections, compliance, and the everyday grind of building something durable out of a plant we once treated like contraband. If canvassers truly blurred the edges to harvest signatures, that’s not democracy—it’s bait-and-switch. Read the summary before you sign. Read it again before you vote. And if you want to stay informed—and stocked—while the Massachusetts cannabis market finds its footing, step into our shop: https://thcaorder.com/shop/.