Massachusetts Voters Overwhelmingly Reject an Attempt To Repeal Marijuana Legalization
· Reason
Ten years ago, Massachusetts voters approved Question 4, a ballot initiative that legalized possession, home cultivation, and commercial distribution of recreational marijuana. On Tuesday, they declined to reverse that decision, overwhelmingly rejecting Question 8, which would have eliminated the legal recreational market and prohibited cannabis consumers from growing their own. With 48 percent of the ballots counted, 76 percent of voters had said no to Question 8.
That result is broadly consistent with nine polls conducted from mid-February to mid-October, where support for Question 8 ranged from 20 percent to 41 percent. In the most recent survey, conducted by The Boston Globe, 71 percent of respondents said they planned to vote no on Question 8.
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In addition to state-licensed marijuana businesses, opposition to Measure 8 included Gov. Maura Healey, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty, and a long list of state and federal legislators, along with various civil liberties, drug policy reform, and law enforcement organizations. "Many of us spent our careers enforcing marijuana laws," a group of current and former police officials said in a letter opposing Measure 8. "We know firsthand what that system cost: resources diverted away from violent crime and toward low-level cannabis offenses, lack of visibility into an unregulated market, and no tools to hold sellers accountable when something went wrong."
Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), the Virginia-based group that provided nearly all of the funding for the Question 8 campaign, had hoped that voters disenchanted with legalization would put the measure over the top. But if anything, a decade of experience with legal cannabis seems to have reinforced opposition to pot prohibition in Massachusetts: While 54 percent of voters favored legalization in 2016, the majority supporting continuation of that policy in Tuesday's election was more than 20 points higher.
"There's no 'buyer's remorse' among voters when it comes to legalizing and regulating marijuana," Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said in an emailed press release. "In fact, more Massachusetts voters support legalization today than did a decade ago, and these election results prove it."
That trend fits a general pattern. In Civiqs surveys last December, support for legal recreational marijuana in 15 states where voters had approved it ranged from 62 percent in Missouri to 77 percent in Oregon. It had increased since legalization in every state but New Jersey, where it was down one point from the 67 percent of voters who approved Public Question 1 in 2020. In Massachusetts, support had risen from 54 percent to 76 percent.
"We're under no illusions that the bluest state in the country is going to pass this easily with flying colors," SAM co-founder Kevin Sabet told WBUR, a Boston NPR station, a few weeks ago. "But we want to have that conversation."
The conversation clearly is not going the way Sabet hoped. Massachusetts, which was the fifth state to legalize recreational marijuana, is now one of two dozen, which together account for most of the U.S. population. In October 2025, Gallup put nationwide support for marijuana legalization at 64 percent, which was down a bit from the peak of 70 percent recorded in 2023 but still 16 points higher than in 2012, when Colorado and Washington started this ball rolling.
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