Expect your "budtender," a clerk at a cannabis dispensary, to start asking if you are registered to vote. Or to start stuffing campaign literature in the bag with your purchase. Or to start directing you to a website with a QR code.
Massachusetts' $2 billion-a-year adult-use cannabis industry is seeing an upcoming ballot question as an existential threat. "An Act to Restore A Sensible Marijuana Policy" will ask voters to once again make recreational marijuana illegal in this state. It might sound like a longshot, as the state's recreational shops have been here a while, opening in 2018, with medical cannabis shops a few years before that. But that hasn't cooled the fear of extinction.
"If we do nothing, this could pass," said Meg Sanders, co-founder and CEO of Canna Provisions. The employee-owned company has stores in Holyoke, Lee, one opening soon in Pittsfield, as well as a manufacturing and growing facility in Sheffield.
A 2025 report from the state Cannabis Control Commission said 37% of Massachusetts residents reported cannabis use in the past year. Polls are not favorable for the ballot item in November that could end recreational marijuana sales in the state.
Read more at Mass Live
