In the past week, prohibitionists attempting to end recreational weed in Mass hit a milestone in the ballot petition process and brought their anti-marijuana message national
If they still published history books, the one about this year would show that while hundreds of Massachusetts cannabis executives were checking into posh hotels in Vegas for another MJBizCon party weekend, Bay State prohibitionists scored a huge win at home and seeded a national media frenzy that will take millions of dollars to push back on, if that’s even possible at this juncture.
While there are countless other critical Mass cannabis stories playing out in the background this holiday season, from the Cannabis Control Commission putting finishing touches on social consumption rules to lab testing drama, the elephant in the green room for more than a month now has been the so-called Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts. Fresh off of a successful effort last year to defeat a referendum to legalize psychedelics in the commonwealth, the group is aiming to place a question on the 2026 ballot that, if passed, could shutter the adult-use cannabis industry.
As Talking Joints Memo first reported, the campaign to end recreational marijuana in Mass used ugly and deceitful tactics to obtain the nearly 75,000 signatures needed by this week to advance in the petition process. Though there is still no organized opposition on paper, pro-industry groups including the Cannabis Business Association are pushing back and questioning those submissions. Nevertheless, spokespeople for the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts have told multiple outlets that they collected more than enough to move forward. As for the allegations against them, the campaign told the Boston Globe that detractors can kick rocks …
“The committee 100 percent does not support folks misrepresenting or lying about the petition,” a spokesperson said. “Even if this is happening, the bottom line is that signing something you didn’t read is not on anybody but you.”
Articles across the country targeting Massachusetts cannabis
While Massachusetts voters wait on the Secretary of the Commonwealth to certify those signatures, after which a few additional steps still remain before their repeal question gets on the ballot, anti-pot crusaders haven’t wasted any time turning the Bay State’s recreational cannabis industry into a national laughingstock.
The Associated Press gave prohibitionists a major boost this past week. A widely syndicated story titled, “They relied on marijuana to get through the day. But then days felt impossible without it,” ran in more than a hundred outlets coast to coast, including majors like the Los Angeles Times. An anecdotal hit piece straight out of the 1950s, it takes a few token examples from Mass to show how addictive and harmful cannabis is after all. In one part, the article actually laments how there is not yet a pharmaceutical available that makes you eschew weed the way that Naltrexone turns you off from alcohol.
While that AP horseshit likely spurred from recent clickbait trends around cannabis use disorder and high-potency not your grandfather’s Thai stick scare tactics, a piece published on Wednesday by the conservative Free Press was more of a direct assault on the Mass cannabis industry. Batting for the effort to end adult-use weed in Mass, the gloating introduction marked a national arrival for the retrograde movement …
“Today, Massachusetts voters took a major step to repeal the legalization of recreational marijuana in the state,” it reads. “This afternoon, the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts submitted the more than 74,000 signatures required to put the question on the 2026 state ballot.”
The article goes on to tout the “anti-weed backlash in America,” as well as its longtime lead cheerleader, “drug policy scholar” Kevin Sabet, founder of the advocacy group Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), “whose influence,” Free Press notes, “is undeniable.”
As for the nature of that influence over the past several decades, I promise that’s a subject we will be revisiting at length should the deceptive campaign to close pot shops in Mass clear the ballot. If you gave Sabet an enema, he could slide into a preroll tube. It will be fun to skewer and undress his falsities at every turn for the next year, I just wish it wasn’t under such outrageous circumstances with so much at stake.
The title of the Free Press piece, by the way, is “Could Massachusetts Become the First State to Undo Legal Weed?” It’s insultingly presumptuous. But considering how these demented teetotalling grifters won’t rest until they manifest their MAGA no-weed Gilead Utopia in Massachusetts, it’s not preposterous.
