Massachusetts officials have formally certified that an initiative to roll back that state’s marijuana legalization law will appear on the November ballot.
The Elections Division of the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Office on Thursday informed organizers that they had turned in enough valid signatures during a second round of petitioning to put the measure before voters—but just barely.
Under state law, Massachusetts ballot campaigns must turn in signatures in two waves. After the first submission, the legislature gets a chance to enact proposed ballot measures after organizers submit an initial round of petitions. Lawmakers in May declined to act on the anti-marijuana measure, however, and so organizers needed to submit additional 12,429 certified signatures by July 1 to make the November ballot.
“I am pleased to inform you that 12,551 certified signatures of the 12,889 received by this Office on or before July 1, 2026, have been allowed,” Michelle K. Tassinar of the Elections Division wrote in a letter to one of the initial signers. “The remaining signatures have been disallowed for not being certified, not in conformance with the interpretation of [state law] or in excess in the allowed number per county.”
“Therefore, the initiative petition will be printed on the November 3, 2026 state election ballot as required by the Constitution,” she said.
Meanwhile, a coalition of Massachusetts marijuana business leaders, healthcare professionals and other advocates have launched a campaign to defeat the measure, which if enacted would repeal laws allowing the regulated commercial sales of recreational cannabis and home cultivation while maintaining legal possession and continuing the medical marijuana system.
In June, the campaign behind the legalization rollback measure, the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts, fired a signature gatherer it says was shown appearing to engage in “wholly unacceptable” conduct in a recent video.
As Marijuana Moment reported, a man petitioning for the Massachusetts initiative as well as a similar anti-cannabis proposal in Maine was depicted in recent social media posts seeming to argue that voters who support legal marijuana access should sign the petitions in order to advance or protect reform.
The campaign later said it has “zero tolerance for any circulation tactics that would mislead petition signers.”
“The identified canvasser was immediately terminated, in coordination with our vendor, upon being made aware of the alleged conduct,” the group said. “The conduct apparent in the video would be wholly unacceptable and does not reflect how this campaign operates. We demand honesty, transparency and professionalism from everyone associated with our effort.”
A video posted to Reddit of the signature gatherer shows the man collecting signatures outside a retail store in Massachusetts next to a sign that says “keep cannabis legal.”
When confronted by a marijuana reform supporter who recorded the petitioner’s interactions with voters, he appeared to be trying to convince them that it is important to qualify the anti-cannabis measure for the ballot in order to then defeat it.
“This is what we’re fighting against right here. That’s why we vote no,” he said. “If we can get this to the ballot right here, we vote no.”
The person who captured the video pointed out that Massachusetts voters already approved marijuana legalization years ago, and that the only way it could be imminently repealed is if the new ballot measure qualified for the November election. If the initiative does not get enough signatures to go before voters, the state’s laws will remain the same.
“It’s my job,” the petitioner insisted, however. “I know what I’m talking about.”
“It’s a group of rich folks from out of state that want to basically take marijuana to when it was a medical marijuana card,” he said. “We don’t want that to happen.”
The same man also appeared to also be gathering signatures for a separate measure in Maine that would similarly repeal laws allowing regulated adult-use marijuana sales and home cultivation rights for adults while keeping possession legal and adding new testing requirements for medical cannabis.
A staffer for the prohibitionist organization Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), whose affiliated group SAM Action is largely funding the anti-cannabis ballot campaigns in both states, declined to comment about the petitioner’s conduct when reached by Marijuana Moment.
The campaigns have previously been accused of misleading petitioning tactics.
In Massachusetts, some voters reported that the campaign used fake cover letters for other ballot measures on unrelated issues like affordable housing and same-day voter registration. Legal cannabis supporters filed a formal complaint about the prohibitionist effort’s tactics, but the State Ballot Law Commission rejected the challenge.
The measure faced a legal challenge from cannabis industry operatives who argued it contains “impermissibly unrelated subjects,” and that the state attorney general’s official summary is “misleading and deficient.” The state Supreme Judicial Court heard oral arguments on the litigation challenging the anti-marijuana initiative but it ultimately ruled against the challenge.
Read state officials’ letter on certification of the anti-marijuana ballot initiative:
