Massachusetts Campaign To Scale Back Marijuana Legalization Has Enough Signatures To Advance Toward Ballot, Officials Say

Massachusetts officials have announced that the campaign behind an initiative to roll back the state’s marijuana legalization law collected enough valid signatures to send the measure to lawmakers for consideration before it potentially gets put in front of voters to decide next on year’s ballot.

As of Thursday, the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Elections Division said it certified 78,301 signatures for the petition, titled “An Act to Restore a Sensible Marijuana Policy.” The initiative would still let adults 21 and older possess and gift up to an ounce of cannabis, but it would repeal provisions of the voter-approved legalization law allowing for commercial sales and home cultivation by adults.

“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,” Michelle Tassinari, first deputy secretary of the Elections Division, said in a notice to the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts. “Therefore, the initiative petition will be transmitted to the Clerk of the House of Representatives, as required by the Constitution.”

The campaign had already expressed confidence that it secured enough signatures to advance. Lawmakers will receive the proposal at the start of the 2026 session on January 7, and they have until May 5 to act on it. If the choose not to enact it legislatively, the campaign would need to go through another round of petitioning and get at least 12,429 certified signatures by July 1 to make the November ballot.

There’s been controversy surrounding the prohibitionist coalition’s signature collection tactics, with allegations that petitioners working on behalf of the campaign shared misleading information about what the measure would accomplish—with claims that paid petitioners have used fake cover letters for other ballot measures on issues like affordable housing and same-day voter registration.

The state attorney general’s office has confirmed it’s received complaints to that end. And an association of state marijuana businesses last month urged voters to report to local officials if they observe any instances of “fraudulent message” or other deceitful petitioning tactics. The campaign has denied the allegations.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s (D) office—which  cleared the campaign for signature gathering in September–has stressed to voters the importance of reading their summary, which is required to go at the top of the signature form, before signing any petitions.

Meanwhile, the head of Massachusetts’s marijuana regulatory agency recently suggested that the measure to effectively recriminalize recreational cannabis sales could imperil tax revenue that’s being used to support substance misuse treatment efforts and other public programs.

Whether the cannabis measures make the cut is yet to be seen. Voters approved legalization at the ballot in 2016, with sales launching two years later. And the past decade has seen the market evolve and expand. As of August, Massachusetts officials reported more than $8 billion in adult-use marijuana sales.

Last month, the Massachusetts Senate approved a bill that would double the legal marijuana possession limit for adults and revise the regulatory framework for the state’s adult-use cannabis market. Similar legislation also advanced through the House earlier this year.

This month, state regulators finalized rules for marijuana social consumption loungues.

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Separately, the state Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) recently launched an online platform aimed at helping people find jobs, workplace training and networking opportunities in the state’s legal cannabis industry.

State lawmakers have also been considering setting tighter restrictions on intoxicating hemp-derived products and a plan to allow individual entities to control a larger number of cannabis establishments.

Also in Massachusetts, legislators who were working on a state budget butted heads with CCC officials, who’ve said they can’t make critical technology improvements without more money from the legislature.

Massachusetts lawmakers additionally approved a bill to establish a pilot program for the regulated therapeutic use of psychedelics. And two committees have separately held hearings to discuss additional psilocybin-related measures.

Read Massachusetts’s officials notice on the marijuana initiative below:

Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.