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.

— Marijuana Moment is tracking hundreds of cannabis, psychedelics and drug policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps, charts and hearing calendar so they don’t miss any developments. Learn more about our marijuana bill tracker and become a supporter on Patreon to get access. —

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.