The most prominent cannabis prohibition group in the U.S. continues to use the “social welfare” arm of its organization to fund a ballot measure aimed at eliminating Massachusetts’ adult-use cannabis program through dark money contributions.
Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) Action Inc. contributed $1.55 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 and another $1.63 million so far in 2026 to the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts Inc., according to a campaign disclosure report filed Sept. 4.
Three individuals also contributed a combined $600 toward the prohibition campaign, including $250 from Brian Kelly, an attorney with Nixon Peabody LLC, according to the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF).
The campaign spent more than $1.8 million toward the signature-gathering process, including $1.4 million to file 78,301 valid signatures ahead of a December 2025 deadline and another $413,000 to file another 12,551 valid signatures ahead of a July 2026 deadline, according to the OCPF.
The campaign hired Missouri-based Groundgame Political Solutions LLC to manage those signature drives.
When the Massachusetts State Ballot Law Commission overruled an objection to allowing the repeal question to appear on the statewide ballot, SAM President and CEO Kevin Sabet took his organization’s financial muscle as a win.
“It’s official: Big Marijuana’s fate is on the ballot in Massachusetts,” he wrote on X in July. “To be clear, this would not put anyone in jail for smoking a joint. But it would rob Big Weed from profiting off of addiction and commercializing hazardous products. It’s long overdue.”
As of Sept. 4, the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts still had $980,000 left to spend ahead of the November election, as Labor Day often marks a transition for ballot campaigns to deploy political advertising dollars to try and sway the electorate.
The campaign’s 2026 ballot question, “An Act to Restore Sensible Marijuana Policy,” will go before Massachusetts voters as Question 8 in the Nov. 3, 2026, midterm election. The proposed statute would repeal the state’s adult-use cannabis laws that voters passed with a 54% majority in the 2016 election to regulate commercial operations and tax the marketplace.
Not only would adult-use dispensary sales be rescinded under the 2026 prohibition proposal, but Question 8 also aims to take away the rights of adults 21 years and older to grow up to six plants at home for personal use.
And although Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed legislation in April to increase the state’s purchase and possession limits for those 21 years or older from 1 ounce to 2 ounces for cannabis flower, the prohibition campaign’s petition intends to make the possession of 1 ounce to 2 ounces punishable by a civil penalty.
Sabet, who co-founded SAM, the charitable arm of the Virginia-based prohibitionist organization, recently told GBH’s All Things Considered that the repeal petition qualified for the 2026 ballot because some Bay State voters believe the financial troubles associated with legalization outweigh the tax benefits.
“I think the reason almost 100,000 Massachusetts residents signed this petition, which was really a grassroots effort, was that they’d been lied to about what marijuana was supposed to bring,” he said on Boston Public Radio. “They thought it was really about freedom, about just a low-potency plant that makes you a little high and a little giggly, a little munchy. And in reality, you know, Massachusetts has [seen] more dangerous roads since legalization. The tax money argument is a mirage because of all the costs that go into administering and dealing with legal marijuana and more people using marijuana.”
Since adult-use sales launched in December 2018, retailers have provided roughly $1.7 billion in tax revenue to the state, according to sales figures from the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission. The state market also provides jobs for 27,000-some industry workers, according to Vangst.
Although Sabet has a leading voice in the effort to repeal the state’s adult-use cannabis program, the money used to support the ballot campaign is considered dark money because it came from SAM Action Inc.
While SAM is a 501(c)(3) “charitable” organization that promotes science and education through tax-deductible donations, its affiliate, SAM Action, is a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization whose funding comes from non-tax-deductible donations, allowing the group to lobby and advocate for “healthy marijuana policies that do not legalize drugs” without disclosing its donors. According to SAM Action, its funding comes primarily from individuals whose lives have been negatively impacted by drugs.
To oppose this repeal initiative, a coalition of dispensary and small business owners, public health professionals, law enforcement officials, labor groups and legalization supporters formed the “No on 8: Stop the Repeal” campaign in June to educate voters about the ballot question.
On Sept. 8, the Stop the Repeal campaign announced it gained an endorsement from the Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP).
“Since legalization, Massachusetts has implemented strict laws that keep cannabis sales within a regulated and age-gated system with product testing from seed to sale. We should not be pushing consumers toward sellers with no age checks, product standards or oversight,” Stop the Repeal Chairperson Ryan Dominguez said. “We are grateful to have the support of Law Enforcement Action Partnership in helping us to defeat this damaging ballot question that threatens public safety. Massachusetts voters made their voices clear when they chose to legalize marijuana a decade ago, and we cannot allow out-of-state groups to come into the commonwealth to repeal this law and threaten the safety of our residents.”
While pollsters expect Massachusetts voters to defeat Question 8 in November, the projected margin has tightened in recent weeks.
Roughly 55% of registered voters plan to reject the question – including 40% who would definitely vote no and 15% who would probably vote no – while 33% of registered voters plan to support the ballot question, according to a statewide survey conducted Aug. 5-12 by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and WCVB Boston.
Those projections were less favorable for cannabis industry stakeholders than a Bay State Poll conducted in February by the University of New Hampshire’s Survey Center under the university’s States of Opinion Project, which found that 63% opposed (48% strongly/15% somewhat) the measure and just 20% of likely voters supported it.
Tatishe Nteta, provost professor of political science at UMass Amherst and director of the more recent poll, pointed to the upcoming political advertising season.
“With the campaign for the ballot question still in its nascent stages and 1 in 10 voters remaining undecided, there remains time for the tables to turn and support for repeal to grow,” he said. “But with Trump voters (48%) and Republicans (45%) the only groups approaching majority support for the ballot question, convincing Massachusetts voters to reverse course on marijuana legalization appears to be a formidable challenge.”
In August, the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts’ campaign spending primarily went toward data analytics ($68,200), legal consulting ($46,193), public relations and digital consulting ($12,500) and strategy consulting ($7,500), according to the OCPF.
