Massachusetts Is Voting On Whether To Shut Down A $10B Legal Weed Market
No state has ever voted on to roll back a full cannabis industry before
No American state has ever voted to repeal an existing adult-use marijuana legalization law. Massachusetts gets the chance in nine weeks.
The Massachusetts marijuana repeal reaches voters as Question 8, titled on the ballot “Prohibit Retail Sale of Adult Recreational Use Marijuana,” one of nine on the longest ballot since 1994. In November 2016 the state legalized adult use 54–46.
Voters have rolled cannabis back before. In 1990 Alaskans passed a ballot measure recriminalizing possession, 54 to 46, undoing protections that had come from a 1975 state Supreme Court ruling and a 1982 decriminalization statute. An appeals court struck it down in 2003. But no state had a licensed, taxed, voter-approved retail market to dismantle. Massachusetts does.
What Question 8 would repeal
Two chapters of law, in full. Chapter 94G licenses and regulates adult-use cannabis. Chapter 64N taxes it. Licensed sales end January 1, 2028.
Medical cannabis continues. The petition amends Chapter 94I to move the Cannabis Control Commission’s authority there, since repealing 94G would otherwise abolish the regulator.
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