The Massachusetts 2026 ballot campaign attempting to wipe out the state’s adult-use cannabis market just got one step closer to putting a prohibition question before voters next November.
Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin’s election division staff notified the campaign’s organizers on Dec. 18 that they filed enough signatures to advance to the next step in the process of qualifying for the ballot.
The Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts, the political committee behind the prohibition proposal, received approval for 78,301 certified signatures, crossing the 74,574-signature threshold required to proceed, according to the secretary of the commonwealth.
Michelle K. Tassinari, first deputy secretary of the elections division, who also serves as director and legal counsel, notified the petitioners.
“I am pleased to inform you that 78,301 certified signatures of the 79,420 received by this office on or before December 3, 2025, have been allowed,” Tassinari wrote. “Therefore, the initiative petition will be transmitted to the Clerk of the House of Representatives, as required by the Constitution.”
The 79,420 signatures received were already certified by local election officials, but the secretary’s elections staff weeded out another 1,119 signatures through a review process that included tossing petition sheets that contained any disqualifying marks, such as scribbles or other deviations from the approved signature-gathering sheets.
The prohibitionists’ petition, “An Act to Restore a Sensible Marijuana Policy,” was one of five potential ballot questions the secretary of the commonwealth advanced in its first review batch: The elections division is still reviewing signatures for six other petitions.
The secretary’s office must transmit the cannabis prohibition proposal – and all other qualifying petitions – to the Massachusetts Legislature by Jan. 7. State lawmakers will then have until May 5 to consider enacting the proposal legislatively.
If lawmakers don’t pass the proposed law by May 5, then the petitioners will have until July 1 to collect another 12,429 signatures required to place the question on the November 2026 ballot.
What’s at Stake?
If it lands on the ballot, the proposal will ask Massachusetts voters to recant their own voice by repealing the adult-use legalization initiative they passed with a 54% majority in the 2016 election.
This would mean the commercial marketplace would cease to exist, and those 21 and older would have no place to legally purchase tested and regulated cannabis without a medical recommendation from a doctor. Also, the proposal would ban the state’s home grow laws, which currently allow those 21 and older to cultivate up to six cannabis plants, but no more than 12 per household, for personal use in their private residences.
In other words, no more licensed cultivation, manufacturing or dispensary sales, and no more basement operations free of government interference. Some 27,000 full-time industry jobs in the state’s $1.6 billion annual adult-use marketplace would be at risk.
However, the state’s medical cannabis market, which makes up less than 9% of overall sales, would be left intact, and adult-use businesses would have the opportunity to transition their licenses to serve qualified patients.
While adults would no longer have access to cannabis products tested for mold, pesticides, heavy metals and other harmful contaminants absent a doctor’s recommendation, the new law wouldn’t necessarily punish them for purchasing cannabis in the unregulated market: Possessing up to 1 ounce of cannabis or 5 grams of concentrate would remain decriminalized.
This potential threat to the legalization movement – no state citizenry that chose to legalize and implement a regulated cannabis program has reversed course – comes as President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Dec. 18 directing his administration to loosen restrictions on cannabis by expeditiously finishing the process of reclassifying it as a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act.
This order was a gut-punch to prohibitionist folks, including Kevin Sabet, the president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM). In his response video to Trump’s Schedule III directive, Sabet mentioned the state-by-state prohibitionist movements in Massachusetts and in Maine, where the secretary of state recently approved a similar ballot petition to start collecting signatures to land a repeal question on either the 2026 or 2027 ballot.
Sabet said SAM plans to file a lawsuit against the Trump administration to try and block a potential final rule to reschedule cannabis. He said SAM hired former U.S. Attorney General William Barr to help lead that charge.
“Now, today, for the first time, I can also announce our multimillion-dollar led support for two grassroots campaigns to end marijuana sales and commercialization in Maine and Massachusetts,” he said. “We still have the power to take back our public health.”
