More than 50 Massachusetts state lawmakers are joining together to oppose an initiative on the November ballot to roll back the state’s marijuana legalization law.
House Speaker Ronald Mariano (D) and Senate President Karen Spilka (D) are among the 62 Democrats and Republicans who announced their support for keeping recreational cannabis sales legal in the state on Friday.
“I’m voting no on Question 8 because recriminalizing cannabis would bring back an unsafe and untaxed black market as well as enforcement that has historically been targeted disproportionately at Black and Brown communities,” Sen. Liz Miranda (D) said. “The legalization of cannabis carried the promise to begin to remediate the harm that was caused by prohibition, over-policing, and incarceration for cannabis related offenses—undoing legalization now and shutting down these businesses would only double that harm.”
Sen. Barry Finegold (D) said that he supports Massachusetts’s “400+ legal and regulated cannabis retailers, the people they employ, and $250 million in tax revenue they generate” and that “this is no time to be shutting down businesses and erecting barriers to entrepreneurial investment.”
The legal cannabis industry “protects the public from adulterated, unsafe street cannabis products,” Sen. Will Brownsberger (D) said. “And it reduces the illegal
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