Massachusetts voters rejected SAM’s repeal measure by more than three to one. Its CEO calls it the start of a tidal wave. We checked his math against his own history lesson.
Kevin Sabet conceded defeat in Massachusetts. Then he said he’d already won.
On Tuesday, Massachusetts voters were asked whether to end adult-use cannabis sales, which have been legal in the state since voters approved them in 2016. Question 8 was the first statewide vote ever held on repealing legal adult-use cannabis, and Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), the country’s best-known anti-legalization group, was its biggest backer.
It lost badly. With an estimated 91% of votes counted, No had 1,827,530 votes and Yes had 589,495, according to the Associated Press. That’s 75.6% to 24.4%, a margin of roughly 51 points. AP called it for No shortly before midnight Eastern.
Sabet, president and CEO of SAM Action, SAM’s political arm, saw it differently.
“Though we didn’t get the result we had hoped for, I’ll be honest with you: we won this thing a long time ago,” he said in a video posted after the results. “I’m feeling really good right now, honestly.”
The Half-Million Club
On X, SAM and Sabet both led with the number that sounded best. “Massachusetts Question 8 results: the first statewide vote ever on ending commercial marijuana sales came up short last night. But more than half a million voters said enough,” the organization posted. Sabet went with the same figure.
“More than half a million people in Massachusetts voted with us,” he wrote.
That’s true. It’s also one way to spin a 3-to-1 defeat. More than 1.8 million voted against them. For every voter who sided with SAM, about three went the other way.
It was also an expensive half a million. SAM Action contributed more than $3.7 million to the campaign, according to CommonWealth Beacon. That’s the equivalent of more than $6 for every Yes vote counted so far.
In SAM’s official statement, Sabet called the result “a pyrrhic victory for the industry.” His argument is that the campaign forced the industry to answer for high-potency products and marketing, and that the next campaign will benefit. That’s a strategic claim, and only the next ballot will test it. What the word itself means is a win that costs the winner too much. On Tuesday, the side that spent millions and lost by 51 points was SAM.
SAM’s History Lesson, Graded
SAM’s main argument is historical, and it’s a fair one on its face. Legalization lost at the ballot box over and over before it won. “Great movements rarely win the first time,” Sabet wrote. His statement includes a list to prove it, with the vote share legalization got in each early defeat:
Those measures didn’t all ask the same thing. Arizona’s 2002 proposal, for example, was about decriminalization and medical access, not a commercial market. But SAM picked the list. And every early defeat it chose to make its point did better than Question 8. The closest is Oregon’s 1986 measure, which got 26% in an era when legal weed was a fringe idea. SAM’s campaign, in 2026, came in under that.
The comparison has another problem. The legalization campaigns on SAM’s list lost when most Americans opposed legalization. Gallup has found majority support for legal marijuana in every annual reading from 2013 through 2025. SAM is now on the side of the old minority.
Maine, You’re Next
In the video, Sabet calls the result the beginning of “a tidal wave” and names the next target. “That next state is most likely Maine in 2027,” he said. A petition to change Maine’s cannabis laws is registered with the state, with a signature deadline in 2027, though it hasn’t qualified for the ballot. He also explained the context of the loss: hundreds of thousands of voters backed repeal, he said, “in one of the bluest states in the country, in a very off year for conservatives.”
To be fair to Sabet, he made a point of saying what SAM isn’t after. “We’re not looking to lock people up in prison for marijuana, arrest them, give them criminal records,” he said. SAM’s fight is with the commercial industry, and it says it will keep pushing in Massachusetts too.
And on one point, SAM is right: none of this is permanent. Massachusetts voters legalized cannabis in 2016 and had to defend it a decade later. Idaho lawmakers tried to take away voters’ power to legalize before voters ever got to use it. Texas’ 2025 ban on hemp THC products passed the Legislature and died only on a governor’s veto. Each of those fights came down to who showed up, at the ballot box, on petitions, at legislative hearings and in the primaries most people skip. SAM has already said where it’s going next. The 1.8 million people who voted No in Massachusetts might want to keep an eye on Maine.
On Election Day, before the polls closed, Sabet posted a different kind of milestone on X. “2026 is the first year we have *not* had a vote to legalize marijuana on the ballot in any state,” he wrote.
He was right. The only statewide vote this year on taking legal weed away was his, and it lost by 51 points.
