Mass. dispensaries make their final push to keep pot sales legal
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The lobby of Legal Greens near Codman Square. Photo: Steph Solis/Axios
Dispensaries across Massachusetts have turned into billboards and field offices campaigning against Question 8, in hopes of stopping a repeal of the legal cannabis market.
The big picture: Business owners will soon find out if they'll continue in an uphill battle to make profits in an increasingly fraught market or, should the measure pass, end up in free fall.
Catch up quick: The repeal campaign is one of several referenda social conservatives have launched to try to rein in progressive policies in blue Massachusetts.
- A proposal to repeal a 2024 law expanding gun control restrictions is also on the ballot.
- Opponents of the state's abortion expansion law say they got enough signatures to get a repeal measure on the 2028 ballot.
Flashback: Unlike the other two issues, legal cannabis wasn't a priority on Beacon Hill until a successful ballot measure 10 years ago, and it took the Legislature two years to pass a law setting up the industry.
- Just like now, the legal cannabis campaign faced opposition from residents warning against impaired driving and the risk of child drug use.
Reality check: Recent polling suggests the ballot measure to repeal legal cannabis will fail.
- A UMass Amherst/WCVB poll of 800 registered, likely voters shows 47% voting no, nearly three times as much as the yes side.
Yes, but: Dispensaries aren't waiting on the sidelines.
- Alongside rolling papers and tablets are brochures tallying the costs of a yes vote — 27,000-plus jobs statewide and on average $272 million in annual tax revenue, per the opposition. (The state took in $336 million in fiscal 2026, slightly less than in fiscal 2025.)
What they're saying: "I know this isn't a big election so it favors the opposite side, but I just really hope people go out and vote," said Vanessa Jean-Baptiste, a Brockton native and co-owner of Dorchester's newest dispensary, Legal Greens.
Zoom in: Jean-Baptiste and her partners opened their first dispensary in Brockton five years ago.
- They handled renovations themselves to keep costs down.
- Now they're taking a chance on Dorchester, employing nearly four dozen people between the two stores.
- "We're depending on the money that both stores make to get out of the debt that we're in," she added. "If Question 8 passes, we're really screwed."
What we're watching: Question 8's defeat would spare Jean-Baptiste and other business owners from the market's sudden death.
- But they'd still have to turn back to the forces that threaten a slow, painful demise: low wholesale prices and price hikes from nearly every direction with no access to bank loans or federal tax refunds in sight.