Voters overwhelmingly oppose Massachusetts adult-use cannabis repeal, new poll finds

More than 70% of Massachusetts voters are opposed to a controversial ballot initiative that would end adult-use cannabis sales in the $1.65 billion annual market, a new poll released on Thursday found.

According to the University of New Hampshire Survey Center’s Bay State Poll, 71% of Massachusetts voters said they plan to vote against Question 8 on the November ballot.

Only 24% of voters are in favor, found the poll, based on 590 respondents with a margin of error of 4%.

The ballot question succeeds or fails with a 50% plus-one simple majority. If passed, Question 8 would ban adult-use cannabis retail sales and recriminalize home cultivation, although adult-use cannabis possession and medical marijuana sales would remain legal.

And Massachusetts would also become the first state in the U.S. to end a legal industry after years of sales.

The weak response from voters for Question 8 comes despite a significant fundraising advantage for recriminalization supporters, who enjoyed a more than 2-to-1 margin as of the most recent campaign finance reporting.

Through the end of August, SAM Action Inc., the political arm of avowed legalization foe Smart Approaches to Marijuana, committed nearly $3.2 million to the so-called Coalition for Healthy Massachusetts.

In response, the cannabis industry, including major marijuana multistate operators, raised roughly $1.54 million through the end of August.

Both campaigns had similar amounts of cash on hand: roughly $980,000 for the repeal campaign, and about $947,000 for the opposition.

Question 8 will be on the ballot despite repeated accusations that paid signature gatherers were using deceptive tactics to fool voters into helping the measure qualify.

Such “dirty tricks” are constitutionally protected free speech, but may have left a sour taste in voters’ mouths.

While banning adult-use cannabis sales was slightly more popular with self-identifying conservatives and Republicans – 33% of whom said they would vote in favor, compared to 23% of self-identifying Democrats – returning adult-use cannabis sales to the illicit market was most popular with libertarians.

Among libertarians, 91% said they were in favor, according to the poll. Recriminalizing adult-use cannabis sales was also more popular among moderates (43%), conservatives (42%) and President Donald Trump voters (42%) than other political affiliations.

Observers believe Massachusetts is the first testing ground for a repeal campaign in part because of the relatively low signature thresholds required to place a measure on the ballot.

There’s also symbolic value for an East Coast state – part of the second wave of adult-use legalization measures a decade ago, following the initial successes in Colorado, Washington and Oregon – to reconsider adult-use cannabis retail sales.

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But cannabis supporters contend that a costly failure in Massachusetts could also spell trouble for SAM, long the legalization movement’s main nemesis in the U.S.

“If we beat SAM here, I think it’s an opportunity for us to put a really big dent in what they’re able to do going forward,” Ryan Dominguez, the No on 8 campaign chair, told MJBizDaily in a recent interview.

Repeal efforts are afoot in other states. A repeal effort in Arizona fizzled out earlier this year, but a campaign to put repeal on the ballot in Maine was collecting signatures earlier this year.

Major labor organizations in Massachusetts are opposed to Question 8, which would also see local communities lose significant amounts of revenue from their local industries.

In Gardner, a town of about 21,000 people in Worcester County, repeal would cost city coffers $300,000 a year, the Gardner News reported.