Massachusetts voters are set to revisit legal cannabis this Election Day. Voters will decide whether regulated recreational marijuana sales should be repealed. If the question passes, Massachusetts would be the first state to repeal marijuana legalization.
Kevin Sabet is president of the Virginia-based group Smart Approaches to Marijuana. Through its action committee, the group has already contributed more than $1.5 million to Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts, Inc., the group behind the ballot question.
Sabet joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to discuss how the question’s supporters view the initiative. What follows its a lightly edited version of their conversation.
Arun Rath: Kevin, tell us about why you would like to see legalization repealed in Massachusetts.
Kevin Sabet: Sure. Well, thanks again for having me. You know, I think the reason almost 100,000 Massachusetts residents signed this petition, which was really a grassroots effort, was that they’d been lied to about what marijuana was supposed to bring. They thought it was really about freedom, about just a low-potency plant that makes you a little high and a little giggly, a little munchy. And in reality, you know, Massachusetts has [seen] more dangerous roads since legalization. The tax money argument is a mirage because of all the costs that go into administering and dealing with legal marijuana and more people using marijuana. The lost productivity [is] hurting business owners. And mainly what we heard was people really didn’t think there’d be so many marijuana stores everywhere, that it would be so highly commercialized, controlled by a few corporations, these super highly potent products with really no end in sight. I mean, 99% potent, some of these products, some of these waxes and dabs. And so that’s really where we’re coming from. And it’s not about criminalizing people either. I think people had said we don’t want to criminalize adults for using. And so that part would still remain intact, but it’s the commercialized sales and the promotion normalization that I think is really on trial here.
Rath: Let’s talk about some of those particulars. We’ll start off with the potency, which you mentioned, which a lot of people have been talking about. Talk a bit more about that, how the potency of today’s marijuana is different from what it was when, say, I was a young man.
Sabet: Yeah. So marijuana is a plant, and like all plants, we’ve learned how to genetically breed them to be more potent. We have bigger tomatoes and bigger pumpkins, and we have all kinds of we never did before. And in the same way, marijuana has been genetically bred and really altered to increase that THC level. THC is one of thousands of components of marijuana, but it’s the component that makes you high. It binds to the receptors in your brain and body. And so the average sort of smokable marijuana now in a dispensary is something like 20% to 30% [potency] when it used to be maybe 20 years ago, about 4% to 5% [potency]. The vapes and the concentrates, these dabs and these cartridges that a lot of people are using, a lot of kids especially, and these vapes can be 90% [potency] or higher. So, it’s really a different drug. It’s like, you wouldn’t call a light beer and a bottle of grain alcohol the same drink by any means. And so it’s really this industry has pushed people to using more higher potent products much more often. And that has happened because we’ve become better farmers, better agriculture, and the industry sort of like the tobacco industry used to do, has really pushed these high-potent products.
Rath: And with that, why not just focus on controlling or regulating the potency? Talk about why the industry is part of the problem here as you see it.
Sabet: Yeah, it is a big part of the problem. It’s like the tobacco industry of the '90s and before that, and like the pharmaceutical industry that brought, you know, very dangerous oversupply of pain medication and addicted and hurt a lot of people. It’s really the same thing. It’s about money. It’s corporate greed. It’s addiction for profit, which I think Massachusetts has a history of actually pushing back on that. That’s why I’m not terribly surprised this ballot initiative we’re seeing, first in the nation, is coming from the Bay State. The industry has resisted all efforts to limit potency, limit products, limit packaging. We’ve tried for more than 10 years. We’ve asked for warning labels, we’ve, you know, proper warning labels. We’ve asked for real potency limits. We’ve asked for advertising constraints. Of course, with the First Amendment, it’s very difficult to restrict corporate advertising. We’ve asked for these things and we’re not getting them. Them because the industry hires lobbyists, ex-politicians, puts out, you know, bogus polling numbers to really push the narrative to their side and act like everybody is good with smelling weed everywhere, every — everybody’s good with these potent products being sold and fine with these pot shops popping up. And, again, I think this ballot initiative is showing that, you know, at least as a first step, that some people do want to push back against them.
Rath: On the other side of the money issue, those who are anti-repeal make the argument that one of the reasons we should not repeal is because this has now become such a huge part of the economy in Massachusetts. The Mass Budget and Policy Center reported [in Sept. 2025] that since the legalization of recreational cannabis, cannabis sales in Massachusetts have generated nearly $2 billion in state and local revenue, with total adult-use retail sales reaching over $8 billion. Additionally, the Boston Globe reports about the state’s Cannabis Social Equity Trust Fund, which receives money from taxes on cannabis sales, fines, and fees, that has awarded close to $60 million to local businesses. Do you have concerns about the economic disruptions that repeal could cause?
Sabet: You know, I know those numbers sound big, but really they’re drops in the bucket compared to the overall budget of the state. First of all, let me tackle the social equity [point]. You know, Massachusetts was supposed to be the gold standard for social equity. It has been nothing but an embarrassment and frankly an affront, I think, to social justice and civil rights. This idea that we’re going to be minting Black and brown millionaires. We were told we were going to be getting, you know, those who were harmed by the War on Drugs were finally going to be benefiting from the sort of renewed interest in marijuana. The only people benefiting have been the hedge fund managers and the Wall Street folks that are the investors in any of the successful companies in Massachusetts. So, this has not been some kind of civil rights win. It’s been dressed up like that, frankly, by privileged libertarians, to be honest with you. It has not produced — and it’s — we’re not — again, we’re not surprised when you look at alcohol outlets, there are eight times as many liquor stores in poorer communities of color than in white communities and upper-class communities.
It’s not surprising that this is the case, this is an industry, frankly, that preys on those who are vulnerable. Let’s be honest. If you’re a young Black kid without a lot of opportunity because society has basically said that, you know, your opportunity is going to come from marijuana, it’s not going to come from, you know, actual housing, healthcare, education reform, which is what we need. You’re going to have a much harder time clawing back from maybe your marijuana addiction because there are so many kids now that are actually — I know it sounds crazy to some people, but they do meet the clinical definition of addiction. One-in-three now, according to the HHS, of users, because of the potency. And that’s going to be a lot harder for that poor Black kid to claw out of than an upper-class white kid out of, you know, another part of town. And so it hurts social justice. And that’s why, you know, I really wince when I hear people say, well, we’re doing this for social justice. It just hasn’t happened. From an overall budget point of view, again, drop in the bucket. And, and, and really, we forget to count the costs, you know, for every car crash, because there’s been a huge increase in car crashes in Massachusetts.
It’s actually 85% of marijuana users in the state now admit to driving right after they use, 50% within an hour or less. Intoxication, by the way, can last hours in terms of affecting you. In fact, it can even last until the next day because marijuana stays in your system and the effects can last so long. That’s one example of cost. There’s also been lost productivity for businesses as a result of absenteeism and no-shows and workplace accidents that go up when you have more of a stoned workforce, when you’re looking for roofers, when you’re looking for people that come in some of these more difficult jobs. So I’m not concerned this is going to hurt the economy. I actually think it’s going to help the economy overall.
To hear delegalization opponents speaking with GBH’s All Things Considered, click here.
