I am really surprised by this: Massachusetts may become first state to repeal marijuana legalization
I am no fan of marijuana usage. I have never even tried a brownie. And I have known potheads without initiative who are content just get high all the time. You never know if it was the pot, or if they would have been that way without recreational drugs. But alcohol abuse destroys lives, too. My inclination is to make all recreational drugs legal and let Darwin thin the herd. Heartless, maybe. But I also think being willfully stupid should hurt.
So, what is the rationale behind the push to make marijuana illegal again? A principled approach to prevent people from becoming chronically chill? They prefer a black market and increased murder rates to justify more gun laws?
Copilot tells me:
The real reasons behind the repeal effort
These are the major drivers cited by repeal advocates, legislators, and policy groups.
1. Public health concerns
Advocates argue that legalization has produced measurable harms:
- Increased ER visits for cannabis‑related anxiety, psychosis, and accidental ingestion by children.
- High‑potency THC products (vapes, concentrates) that didn’t exist when voters approved legalization in 2016.
- Rising youth usage rates, especially with edibles and vape pens.
- Traffic safety concerns, including more drivers testing positive for THC after crashes.
Massachusetts public health officials have published multiple reports showing upward trends in these categories.
2. Community impact concerns
Some municipalities report:
- Nuisance complaints around dispensaries (parking, crowds, loitering).
- Odor complaints near cultivation facilities.
- Local zoning conflicts over where shops can operate.
- Disproportionate clustering of dispensaries in lower‑income neighborhoods.
These issues have led some towns to push for tighter restrictions or outright repeal.
3. Regulatory dissatisfaction
Massachusetts’ Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) has faced:
- Leadership turnover
- Accusations of slow licensing
- Lawsuits over equity program implementation
- Complaints from both industry and anti‑industry groups
Repeal advocates argue the system is “unfixable” and should be scrapped.
4. Black market expansion
Ironically, legalization did not eliminate the illicit market. In fact:
- Illegal delivery services expanded.
- Unlicensed grow operations increased.
- Illicit products are often cheaper than regulated ones.
- Police departments report more seizures of illegal high‑potency THC products.
Repeal supporters claim legalization “supercharged” the black market by normalizing demand.
5. Economic disappointment
The industry has not delivered the promised benefits:
- Many dispensaries are failing or closing.
- Tax revenue is lower than projected.
- Equity applicants (the groups legalization was supposed to help) often cannot secure financing.
- Large multi‑state operators dominate the market.
Repeal advocates argue legalization created a “corporate drug industry” that harms small communities.
6. Youth mental health concerns
This is one of the strongest motivators behind repeal efforts:
- Schools report more cannabis‑related disciplinary issues.
- Pediatricians report more cases of cannabis‑induced psychosis.
- THC vape pens are extremely easy for teens to obtain.
- Some parents’ groups argue legalization normalized youth use.
This argument resonates strongly with suburban communities.
7. Political momentum from other states
Even though no state has fully repealed legalization, several have:
- Paused licensing
- Imposed moratoriums
- Tightened THC potency limits
- Restricted advertising
- Increased taxes
- Proposed partial rollbacks
Massachusetts repeal advocates cite these moves as evidence of a national “course correction.”
8. Moral or cultural opposition
Some groups simply believe legalization was a mistake on moral or cultural grounds:
- Concern about “drug normalization”
- Fear of long‑term societal effects
- Desire to reverse what they see as a failed social experiment
This is the smallest but loudest faction.
🧩 What’s actually happening in Massachusetts right now
Based on legislative filings and public statements:
- A ballot initiative has been drafted to repeal recreational legalization.
- Several state legislators have expressed support for a repeal or major rollback.
- Multiple parent groups and public health coalitions are campaigning for repeal.
- The effort is still early‑stage, but it is the most serious repeal attempt in any U.S. state so far.
Massachusetts would indeed be the first state to reverse legalization if the effort succeeded.
Interesting.
And yet they seem fine with leaving liquor stores fully open. Pick a lane, people.
Alcohol prohibition has already been tried at the highest possible level, and it was a complete and amazing failure.
I would view “The War on Drugs” as fairly similar, really, though many of those drugs are a lot more dangerous than alcohol and make me nervous when people are on them in public…
Marijuana is illegal for a simple reason….because making it illegal facilitates the WAR ON FREEDOM. Which is what the “war on drugs” actually is.
The failures of legalization also display the inability of totalitarian governments to anticipate clearly foreseeable issues One shining example is that the government bureaucracies put so many obstacles in the path of the legal outlets, and then proceed to tax the daylights out of it, that they raise the price so high that illegal dope is so much cheaper that it appears to be a better alternative.
And all of this in an attempt to criminalize the growing, possession, and use of a weed that grows naturally in all lower 48 states, and is now endemic in all 50. Yeah, yeah, I know that the new breeds of the industrial stuff is far stronger (10 times? 100 times?) than the old-fashioned ditchweed that the hippies used to smoke but it’s still the same tetrahydro-canabinol as its active ingredient.
As far as I know it’s still unlawful to grow, possess, or use here in Wyoming. The difference between living here in TinyTown™ and making a bulk-shopping run to the big city in Montana is remarkable. The sheer number of drug-addled bums and beggars on the streets is amazing there.
The major problems appear to me to be many-fold, and have at their source the abject failures of governmental systems.
1. The various dot-gov entities have completely given up on maintaining social order on the streets by failing to enforce vagrancy laws and other ordinances that would heavily penalize people for violations (urinating and defecating in public as one example). I’m guessing that enforcing those kinds of violations with a couple of months clearing brush and picking up garbage by hand on a hot, flat, dusty highway would go a long way to deterring that kind of behavior.
2. The lack of enforcement against public intoxication, and operating heavy machinery (cars, trucks) while intoxicated. I don’t care if they’re drunk or if they’re stoned, the penalties should be swift and heavy. I wonder if somebody has developed an “instant” breath test for THC intoxication like they have for alcohol? I’d like to demand the creation of such a gizmo prior to any more legalization.
3. The subsidizing of the bad behaviors involved. Our current welfare state now supplies housing, food, and medical care to anyone lazy enough to ask for it. There is zero incentive for lazy people to have to get sober, stay sober, and find employment. Right now potential employers have to compete with the largesse of city, county, state and federal government handouts for any lower-paid employees.
I could go on almost endlessly on how the governments simultaneously fail and subsidize this behavior, but all of that would have to stop before I’d support any more legalization…and the odds of that happening are exactly ZERO.
Hard times make nicotine men.
Nicotine men make good times.
Good times make weed guys.
Weed guys make hard times.
I told that to a friend of mine who did a lot of weed for a good chunk of his early adulthood and (coincidentally I’m sure) really made a lot of bad choices. He’s been getting his life back together for a few years now… and he laughed SO VERY VERY HARD at that. His own life proved it.
The tension that drives the War on Drugs is that freedom only works when people can make at least somewhat rational decisions – that is, you make the decision, you pay the consequences. This helps people NOT do the really dump, destructive, horrible things most of the time.
People who are high have short-circuited the mechanism that makes that work, and punishing them afterwards does not undo the horrible damages they have done while their brain was (intentionally) disabled.
That’s why I’m in favor of something like “drug hotels” and such. Suck the money out of the black market, enable freedom (even stupid, self-destructive freedom), but let’s not have people walking the streets high if we can possibly help it, eh?
As noted, one source of support for legalization is the reflexive leap by tax addicts.
How about making NARCAN and all similar products illegal to use on anyone over the age of 18?
Legalize all drugs for those over 18.
Mandatory jail time for anyone who allows minors access to controlled substances. Lock up your booze!
Allow people to take responsibility for their actions, and to remove themselves permanently before they cost taxpayers a fortune in court, law enforcement, incarceration, and medical expenses
“How about making NARCAN and all similar products illegal to use on anyone over the age of 18?””
The, or ‘a’ problem with that is; Fentanyl and the stronger versions can be absorbed transdermally and people have been accidentally and unintentionally overdosed.
And just what protocol can you devise to determine intentional from unintentional? Hmm?
I am not enthusiastic about making marijuana illegal again, but if you live in the city, as I do, you can understand why the idea is gaining popularity.
Pot smell has become the new Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard, a shorthand way of identifying an area of town as a shithole. You’ll typically see people screaming threats at the world, people who look like vagrants accosting people and either asking for money or (worse) trying to initiate a conversation, empty storefronts, human feces on sidewalks, people sleeping in blankets on the ground, etc.
Add to this that the legalization was sold not as a libertarian NOYDB measure, which is why I personally supported it, but as the emergence of the miracle drug that would usher in a golden age of peace, prosperity, and balanced budgets. It’s no wonder that some people want to go back to the good old days when sidewalks were feces-free.
Huh. I figured it was a response to the recent SCOTUS decision that marijuana usage was not a bar to gun ownership, given MA’s tendency toward overreaction to anything even slightly positive to gun owners. Make it illegal again, and they can use it to get gun owners again.
“How about making NARCAN and all similar products illegal to use on anyone over the age of 18?””
The, or ‘a’ problem with that is; Fentanyl and the stronger versions can be absorbed transdermally and people have been accidentally and unintentionally overdosed.
And just what protocol can you devise to determine intentional from unintentional? Hmm?