“For too long, cannabis businesses, advocates, veterans, patients and policymakers have operated in separate corners of the same fight. We have allowed disagreements over business models, regulations, personalities and competing interests to divide us.”
By Gretchen Gailey, Project Champion
Massachusetts voters sent an unmistakable message on Election Day: they are not interested in going backward. By an overwhelming margin of 75 percent to 25 percent, voters rejected Question 8, defeating an effort to dismantle the state’s regulated adult-use cannabis market.
To the voters who took the time to learn about the issue, show up at the polls and make their voices heard: thank you. Your vote was about more than preserving a legal marketplace. It was a statement about consumer choice, personal freedom, responsible regulation and the right of communities to benefit from the policies they helped put in place.
Ten years after Massachusetts voters approved adult-use legalization, they were asked whether they wanted to undo that decision. They answered decisively.
On behalf of Project Champion, I want to recognize Ryan Dominguez and the entire Stop the Repeal campaign for bringing us into this fight. Ryan reached out, and we were proud to answer the call by bringing former NFL running back Ricky Williams to Massachusetts to stand alongside the campaign and help get the word out.
Project Champion didn’t have a direct business interest in Massachusetts. We weren’t protecting a dispensary, a cultivation facility or a particular state’s market. But we understood something fundamental: an attack on one part of this industry is an attack on all of us.
That is why we showed up.
Ricky Williams understood the importance of this fight, too. His own journey has helped change the conversation around cannabis, health and wellness, and the need to move beyond outdated stigma. He used his platform to speak directly to voters about what was at stake—not just for business owners, but for consumers, patients, employees and communities.
Our work also took us to Haverhill, where Ricky helped bring attention to local Question 10. That effort, led by local advocates and business owners including Stem Dispensary owner, Caroline Pineau, was about giving communities and consumers another option: a safe, regulated place to responsibly consume cannabis. Haverhill voters narrowly approved the measure, advancing the kind of local control and consumer access that the original intent of Massachusetts’s legalization law envisioned.
These victories matter. But perhaps the most important lesson isn’t simply that Question 8 lost. It’s how we got here.
When this industry comes together, we can make a difference.
For too long, cannabis businesses, advocates, veterans, patients and policymakers have operated in separate corners of the same fight. We have allowed disagreements over business models, regulations, personalities and competing interests to divide us. Meanwhile, those who want to roll back progress have had no problem organizing around a common objective.
We should also be clear-eyed about who we are up against. Organizations like Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) are not going away. They are well-funded, well-organized and singularly focused on one objective: ending cannabis legalization and rolling back the progress states have made. They have a clear, consistent message and the resources to pursue it relentlessly.
We, on the other hand, represent an industry and a movement with a thousand different perspectives, competing business interests, philosophies and priorities. That diversity is not inherently a weakness; in many ways, it is what makes this movement so broad and powerful. But when we allow those differences to keep us from finding common ground, we make our opponents’ jobs much easier. They don’t need us to agree on everything. They just need us to remain divided.
Massachusetts showed what happens when we stop operating in silos. National voices joined local businesses. Athletes stood alongside entrepreneurs. Advocates worked with community leaders. People who might not otherwise have found themselves on the same side of a political fight recognized that the stakes were bigger than any one company or individual.
That is the model we need to take nationally.
And we need it now.
There is a dangerous temptation to look at the progress surrounding federal rescheduling and assume the hardest work is behind us. It isn’t. The recent federal move to issue Schedule III registrations to hundreds of qualifying medical dispensaries is significant, but it also raises serious questions about how this process is being administered, who gets access to its benefits and what happens to the thousands of businesses and workers who remain outside that framework.
A limited federal pathway for certain medical cannabis activities is not comprehensive reform. It is not descheduling. It does not resolve the uncertainty facing the broader state-legal industry, and it does not provide the certainty that businesses, employees, patients and consumers need.
We should be asking hard questions about transparency, fairness and access. Federal policy cannot create a system in which a select group of businesses benefit while the rest of an industry that helped build this market is left waiting for answers.
Nor should anyone assume that the so-called blue wave in Congress guarantees a friendlier environment for cannabis reform. We have been here before. When Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress, the industry still failed to secure meaningful federal legislative progress on priorities such as the SAFE Banking Act and comprehensive cannabis reform. Political alignment is not a substitute for political accountability. We cannot afford to confuse campaign promises or party labels with action.
The reality is simple: lawmakers respond when their constituents, businesses and communities show up. They respond when they hear from organized, credible coalitions that represent more than one company’s balance sheet or one narrow segment of the market.
That means we cannot become complacent after a victory in Massachusetts. We cannot assume someone else will do the lobbying, make the calls, educate lawmakers or defend the policies that allow this industry to operate. And we cannot afford to show up only when our own businesses are threatened.
That is exactly why organizations like Project Champion matter.
Our mission is to advocate for the broader industry and the people whose lives are affected by these policies—not just select businesses or special interests. We bring together patients, entrepreneurs, advocates and policymakers around common ground: responsible access, individual freedom, fair regulation and an end to the outdated policies that have held this issue back for decades.
Massachusetts reminded us of what is possible when we stand together. It also reminded us of what is at stake when we don’t.
To Ryan Dominguez, the Stop the Repeal campaign, Caroline Pineau, the Primitiv Group, Shawn Collins, the local businesses and advocates who did the hard work, and especially the voters of Massachusetts: thank you for showing the country what collective action looks like.
Now let’s build on it.
The fight isn’t over. In many ways, the next chapter is just beginning. And the only way we win it is together.
Gretchen Gailey is the president of Project Champion, a collective of former professional athletes advocating for sensible cannabis and hemp reform. She is a veteran communications strategist and former journalist with over 20 years of media and political experience, now leading national cannabis campaigns and policy efforts.
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