Tracking down canvassers, mostly in front of Massachusetts grocery stores, who are misinforming petition signers
If there’s one thing I am sure of after decades of observing prohibitionists in action, it’s that they are completely full of shit. And so I haven’t really been surprised by what I have seen play out over the past week in Mass, where anti-cannabis crusaders are attempting to place a measure to end recreational sales on the 2026 ballot. It’s no less abhorrent, but I certainly was not shocked.
Last month, Attorney General Andrea Campbell announced that two similar referendums that aim to eliminate adult-use cannabis commerce in the Bay State are eligible to appear on the statewide ballot. Though backers still have to gather nearly 75,000 signatures by Nov. 19 to advance to the next review, the aggressive lunge at the billion-dollar industry made national headlines.
Put simply, the smugly titled Act To Restore a Sensible Marijuana Policy calls for there to still be medical dispensaries, with some new rules, while everything else that everyone from public officials to activists and entrepreneurs have worked years for will be torched. The measure would also repeal the right to cultivate cannabis at home.
With so much at stake, I figured those whose livelihoods rely on the adult-use industry might pay close attention. After all, Massachusetts cannabis has had its share of public troubles, while commonwealth voters are hardly reliable supporters of progressive drug policy; just look at the disaster which unfolded last year around psychedelics.
And there is yet another reason why stakeholders ought to tune in—as it turns out, the forces that are trying to eviscerate their jobs and zap Mass back to the dark ages of parking lot handoffs aren’t playing fair. Over the past few days, I went to see their tactics on display on the ground and in person, and it’s even scarier than I expected, a scream for this year’s Halloween that no one needed.
Supermarket stakeout
I received my first tip about a signature gatherer allegedly misleading people last Wednesday. She signed something that she later came to question outside of a Trader Joe’s in Hanover, on the South Shore. I drove down to the shopping center two days later, on Friday, and encountered the same man who she described, collecting signatures to place the aforementioned anti-pot measure—along with three others—on next year’s ballot.
I didn’t play an easy mark. Rather, I asked questions, first about another initiative related to housing and then about the cannabis petition. He told me exactly what he told my source, that it “makes it so they will stop throwing kids in jail for marijuana.” I asked for the clipboard, which he handed over; scanning it, I verified that he was gathering signatures for “25-10 Initiative Petition for a Law Relative to Regulating Marijuana – Version B.”
The language presented to prospective signers is the state’s official summary of the proposal. The small print is difficult to read under ideal circumstances, but harder when you’re carrying groceries and fumbling a pen with cold hands on a brisk autumn day. In this case, the wording is also confusing, and the ink collector wasn’t there to help, but rather to misinform. I hesitated to sign, giving him three chances to tell me that the referendum would shutter all recreational dispensaries. But all he offered was a version of the section calling for “persons 21 years of age and younger” caught with “2 ounces or less” to complete “a drug awareness program and community service.”
I listened as he solicited the person behind me as well. An older woman, she was less inquisitive, and basically just signed. She seemed to agree with his reasoning—that we need to keep kids out of jail for smoking weed—which isn’t really a concern in Massachusetts. The gatherer told me that most people are like her—they just sign without asking for many if any clarifications. In a few days last week at that single location, he said that he collected about 700 signatures.
What the proposed Massachusetts marijuana ballot measure really says
As for what is actually in the approved measure(s). Below we reprinted the summary for the Initiative Petition for a Law Relative To Regulating Marijuana, outrageously billed as an Act To Restore a Sensible Marijuana Policy, that is being presented outside of Mass grocery stores (note that for some reason, the petitions that people are asked to sign don’t actually include the name of the proposal):
The proposed law would change the type and amount of marijuana that may legally be possessed in Massachusetts by repealing the laws that legalize, regulate, and tax the retail sale of adult recreational use marijuana in Massachusetts. The proposed law would also permit persons 21 years of age and older to possess 1 ounce or less of marijuana including no more than 5 grams in the form of concentrate, and to gift or transfer to another person 21 years of age and older 1 ounce or less of marijuana including no more than 5 grams in the form of concentrate. The proposed law would also impose a civil penalty of $100 and forfeiture of the marijuana for the possession of marijuana between the weight of 1 and 2 ounces.
For persons 21 years of age and younger, the proposed law would make the possession of 2 ounces or less of marijuana a civil infraction subject to a $100 fine, forfeiture of the marijuana, completion of a drug awareness program and community service, and notification to their parents or legal guardian of the offense and penalties.
The proposed law would allow currently licensed adult recreational marijuana businesses to apply on an expedited basis to become a licensed medical marijuana dispensary and to sell their remaining inventory of adult recreational marijuana to medical marijuana dispensaries. The proposed law would retain the Cannabis Control Commission but modify its authority so it would regulate only the medical marijuana market.
The proposed law states that, if any of its parts were declared invalid, the other parts would stay in effect.
The proposed law would take effect on January 1, 2028.
Taking action against the proposed ballot measure
Following a video that I recorded outside of the aforementioned Trader Joe’s gaining some traction, I started to receive more messages about other questionable signature drives. Interestingly, people are reporting hearing strikingly similar language all around the state—namely, comments about how the initiative would end the plight of young people doing hard time for weed.
On Monday, I followed another tip, this one to a Walmart in Weymouth. Though not too far from Hanover, this time I encountered two different canvassers, each with their own unique pitch. It seemed like these guys were willing to say whatever it took to sway people, which is understandable since they’re paid for each successful signature obtained. I was told that they are trying to put marijuana back on the ballot “so the people can decide,” as if the people didn’t already decide in 2016.
I also heard the other guy telling a man who he was pitching that people are coming here from out of state and buying ounces to bring back, and that the proposed measure aims to bring an end to such activity. It was a nonsense rationale for a worthless proposal tackling a nonexistent underlying problem that this referendum seeks to address, and it’s no surprise if you consider who’s behind it. The main proponent and multiple original petition signers listed on the anti-cannabis proposal are district committee members of the state Republican party (MassGOP). And last week, they were out talking shit …
“The signature phase is going well. It’s on track,” the spokesperson for the campaign told Cannabis Business Times. “The whole process, the initiative petition process, isn’t easy. … While we need to collect 74,000 [signatures], we actually have a goal of collecting over a hundred thousand, and that’s because there are two different vetting processes that the signature sheets, the petitions, will go through.”
One proponent behind the measure to close rec shops also served as a consultant for the campaign against Question 4, to legalize and regulate psychedelics in Mass, which went down in flames last year. If cannabis advocates are wondering if they should be concerned about a repeal measure, they should ask psychedelics advocates how sitting around doing jack shit while their opponents trashed them from town halls to airwaves statewide worked out for them.
Meanwhile, some people with skin in the game are taking action, like the team at Canna Provisions printing up flyers to inform customers about the stakes. The Institute for Cannabis Science also stepped up, instructing people to “contact the Secretary of Commonwealth at 1-800-292-6090 about illicit election activity,” as well as “your town clerk to have your name expunged if you were tricked into signing.” ICS would also like to hear your story.
Jonathan Ferguson, the CEO of Green Valley Analytics, a testing lab, reached out to the office of the chair of the Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy, and was told to contact the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Elections Division. He then emailed to inform them that “Many voters have been approached under the false impression that they are signing something to enhance, rather than dismantle, the state’s regulated system,” noting, “This type of misleading representation risks invalid signatures and undermines the integrity of the ballot process.”
I’m on the job as well. People on social media have reported many more canvasser sightings—and in some cases potentially problematic tactics—at the Hannaford in Taunton, and at Market Basket locations in Shrewsbury, Georgetown, and Bellingham, among other places, all the way out to Western Mass in the Berkshires. I will follow up with some of them, and I encourage everyone to ask questions and know what they are signing, and to sound alarms where there is smoke. If this measure is as sexy as the marijuana haters say it is, then they shouldn’t have to bend the truth to get it on the ballot.
