Marijuana Ballot Losses: The Lobby Called Every One “Progress.” Then Came Question 8.
For 24 years, legalization groups answered every ballot defeat with the same line: a debate started, a step taken, a promise to return. Then Massachusetts voted.
Massachusetts voters rejected Question 8 on Tuesday, and legalization groups called the result a verdict. However, the groups have a long record of marijuana ballot losses of their own. After each one, they said the opposite.
About 81 percent of precincts had reported by Wednesday morning. By then, 550,708 people had voted yes on the measure to end commercial marijuana sales, according to the Associated Press tally. The no side led by roughly three to one. It was the first statewide vote in the country on rolling back a legal marijuana market.
NORML’s Paul Armentano said the vote showed “the public hasn’t changed their minds.” In a statement Wednesday, he called Question 8 “a trial balloon by prohibitionist groups.” The defeat, he predicted, “will likely cause these groups, and those who fund them, to reconsider those plans.”
What the Lobby Said After Its Own Marijuana Ballot Losses
In November 2022, legalization took three ballot losses in one night, in Arkansas, North Dakota and South Dakota. Armentano told the Arkansas Advocate, “At minimum, it’s a temporary setback, it definitely doesn’t halt our momentum.”
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In fact, the pattern of marijuana ballot losses recast as wins goes back a quarter century. In 2002, the Marijuana Policy Project’s Nevada legalization measure lost 61 percent to 39 percent. Campaign chief Billy Rogers told the Las Vegas Sun, “Our success in this campaign is that we created a national debate on this issue.”
Then, four years later, MPP tried Nevada again and took another ballot loss, 56 to 44. Campaign manager Neal Levine told the Associated Press that backers were “not bummed out.” He added, “It’s 100 percent certainty that we will be back on the ballot.”
Likewise, when California’s Proposition 19 failed in 2010, Drug Policy Alliance founder Ethan Nadelmann issued a statement calling the loss “an extraordinary victory for the broader movement to legalize marijuana.” The measure’s “mere presence on the ballot, combined with a well run campaign, transformed public dialogue about marijuana and marijuana policy,” he wrote.
In March 2023, Oklahoma voters rejected legalization in all 77 counties, 62 percent to 38 percent. Campaign director Michelle Tilley told supporters that “marijuana legalization is not a question of ‘if,’ it’s a question of ‘when,'” Cannabis Business Times reported.
“Defeats Before Success”
South Dakota handed legalization its third ballot defeat in 2024. MPP’s South Dakota page calls that result “a major disappointment” and notes that “several other states where voters ultimately legalized cannabis saw defeats before success, including Colorado, California, Alaska, Oregon, and Nevada.”
For example, Colorado rejected a possession measure in 2006 and legalized in 2012. Similarly, Arizona rejected legalization in 2016 and approved it in 2020. Each ballot loss drew the same response from the groups behind it: a step, a debate started, a promise to return.
Marijuana Ballot Losses and the Massachusetts Margin
To be sure, Question 8 lost by a wider margin than any of those marijuana ballot losses. Its backers framed the measure as the first test of repeal anywhere in the country. Through October 15, the yes side had spent $3.6 million and the industry-funded no side $2.6 million. That made it the state’s most expensive ballot question, MJBizDaily reported from state filings.
Meanwhile, even the Boston Globe editorial board, which opposed the measure, conceded most of its arguments about potency, youth use and the industry’s conduct.
Legalization advocates spent 24 years telling voters that a ballot loss is where a movement starts. On Tuesday night, more than half a million Massachusetts voters took them at their word.
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