Politics
Maine Anti-Marijuana Campaign Misses Deadline To Submit Signatures For Legalization Rollback Ballot Initiative
A Maine campaign seeking to significantly roll back the state’s marijuana law failed to submit signatures by a deadline this week to make the November 2026 ballot, meaning the anti-cannabis activists will need to shift their focus to 2027 if they hope to put the issue before voters.
Amid criticism from reform advocates, industry stakeholders and certain lawmakers over allegedly misleading signature gathering tactics, Mainers for a Safe and Healthy Future was evidently unable to make the cut by the February 2 turn-in deadline.
“The cannabis petitions were not returned yesterday,” Deputy Secretary of State for Communications Jana Spaulding told Cannabis Business Times on Tuesday. In Maine, that doesn’t mean the campaign needs to start from scratch, however, as they can still pursue putting the proposal on next year’s ballot.
A Maine Republican lawmaker and marijuana industry advocates last month sounded the alarm over claims that the prohibitionist campaign was using misleading petition tactics to get voters to sign the petition.
A video shared by Rep. David Boyer (R) featured an image of a person seemingly collecting signatures for the ballot measure and an audio recording where he significantly misrepresented what the cannabis proposal would accomplish, claiming that its primary intent was to ensure product safety with enhanced testing requirements.
In reality, the initiative would end regulated recreational marijuana sales as approved by voters in 2016. Possession of up to 2.5 ounces of cannabis would remain legal, but adults would no longer be able to grow plants for personal use or buy adult-use cannabis from licensed stores.
There is a testing component to the proposed initiative as it concerns medical marijuana, with a revised regulatory structure. But the notion that it would improve product safety for recreational cannabis is difficult to square given the removal of legal access to regulated products that it contemplates.
“The prohibitionists’ petition to repeal adult-use cannabis in Maine has relied on lies and misinformation to collect signatures,” Boyer, who led the fight to pass cannabis legalization at the ballot about 10 years ago when he was a staffer for the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), said in a statement to Marijuana Moment on Wednesday. “Thankfully, they did not make the deadline for the November 2026 ballot, but that doesn’t mean they are done.”
“I believe they will continue to their campaign of deceit and turn in the necessary signatures for the next election,” he said. “The adult-use and medical cannabis community must come together to defeat this failed policy, once again.”
Stephen Dunker, co-founder of the Maine-based marijuana shop OG Cannabis, told Marijuana Moment last month that there were “serious” concerns about the language of the measure itself, which purports to be about strengthening the state’s medical marijuana program, without making clear it would also upend the adult-use market.
“Voters deserve transparency, not deceptive ballot language designed to trick them into signing,” he said in an email.
Meanwhile, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Maine also recently implored voters not to sign the petition to put the “really dumb” cannabis repeal initiative on this year’s ballot.
“It’s dumb. It’s a dumb idea. Let’s focus on the things that really matter—the things that are going to make Maine a better place,” David Jones, a real estate executive who previously ran for governor in 2006, said in December.
The proposal, which officials cleared for signature gathering in December—is titled “An Act to Amend the Cannabis Legalization Act and the Maine Medical Use of Cannabis Act.” It’s a revised version of a marijuana initiative filed in September that was backed by a Republican state senator and a former top staffer to then-Gov. Paul LePage (R), a staunch prohibitionist.
Madison Carey, who was listed as the chief petitioner of the original version of the repeal initiative and remains involved in the current campaign, told Marijuana Moment in December that “there needs to be regulations on marijuana,” arguing that her experience recovering from an opioid misuse disorder speaks to the insufficiency of current law.
“My hope is to just bring awareness to the reality of the potential dangers of not having regulations,” she said. “I think people are fed up with the constant use—the constant [retail businesses] coming up where people can now legally purchase marijuana.”
Of course, repealing the voter-approved law that enacted a system of licensed adult-use sales would eliminate the current regulatory infrastructure that’s in place, which reform advocates argue helps mitigate the public health and safety risks associated with the illicit market.
Under the measure, the director of the Office of Cannabis Policy would face a mandate to “promote the health and well-being of the people of the state and advance policies that protect public health and safety, emphasizing the health and well-being of minors, as priority considerations in performing all duties.”
They would also have to “ensure that qualifying patients maintain access to high-quality, effective and affordable cannabis for medical use under this Act.”
The Department of Administrative and Financial Services would be required to create a testing program for cannabis products, requiring dispensaries and caregivers to submit such products to a licensed facility for a safety assessment before they’re distributed to qualified patients.
The testing facility would need to “ensure that the cannabis or cannabis product does not exceed the maximum level of allowable contamination for any contaminant that is injurious to health and for which testing is required and to ensure correct labeling.”
“The department shall adopt rules establishing a testing program pursuant to this section, rules identifying the types of contaminants that are injurious to health for which cannabis and cannabis products must be tested under this chapter and rules regarding the maximum level of allowable contamination for each contaminant,” the ballot initiative text states.
Further, regulators would need to administer a system for tracking cannabis plants from seedings to the point of retail sale or disposal. That system would have to “allow for cannabis plants at the stage of cultivation and upon transfer from the stage of cultivation to another registrant to be tracked by group.”
Activists needed to submit at least 67,682 valid voter signatures by February 2 in order to qualify for the November ballot. If they’d accomplished that and the measure was approved by voters, the initiative would have taken effect beginning on January 1, 2028.
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The Maine effort was one of three 2026 campaigns seeking to reverse course on state cannabis laws.
In Massachusetts, for example, officials recently rejected a challenge to a ballot initiative that seeks to significantly scale back the state’s marijuana legalization law by repealing regulated sales.
Over in Arizona, meanwhile, a GOP congressional lawmaker recently said he’d like to see his stateroll back its voter-approved marijuana legalization law with an initiative that could be on the November ballot—but he acknowledged that President Donald Trump’s federal rescheduling order could complicate that prohibitionist push.
Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.
