Tomorrow, Massachusetts voters decide Question 8 — whether to repeal the state’s legal, regulated cannabis retail market and go back toward prohibition. Two retired law enforcement officers say that’s the wrong move.
Dianne Goldstein, a retired California police lieutenant and executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, and Karen Hawkes, a retired Massachusetts state trooper, write that police already face considerable demands on their time and resources — and renewed cannabis enforcement would only add to that burden.
Their case, in short:
- A regulated market means tested, labeled, child-resistant products that regulators can trace. In 2023, 84% of Massachusetts cannabis consumers bought through legal channels, up from about 61% in 2019.
- Youth use fell: past-30-day cannabis use among Massachusetts public high school students dropped from 30.2% in 2019 to 13% in 2025. The authors note the decline can’t necessarily be credited to legalization, but it challenges the assumption that a legal adult-use market inevitably drives up teen use.
- Repeal wouldn’t end consumption or impaired driving — it would just divert officers from violent crime, human trafficking, and protecting vulnerable people, while threatening nearly $5 million in safety campaigns.
“Criminalizing cannabis commerce is not the same as protecting the public,” they write.
Kentucky knows this story too. From July 2002 to June 2022, 303,264 Kentuckians were charged with cannabis offenses — police time, court time, and lives disrupted over a plant. Kentucky still criminalizes what Massachusetts voters chose to regulate a decade ago.
Kentucky deserves the same common-sense approach: adults 21 and older able to possess up to one ounce and cultivate, harvest, and store up to five plants for personal use, free of criminal sanction, with the General Assembly regulating production, processing, and sale.
Sign the petition to put cannabis decriminalization on the Kentucky ballot: https://www.change.org/LetKentuckyVote
And drop your county to show support across all 120 counties: https://legalizekentucky.com/drop-your-county
Source: Marijuana Moment, “Massachusetts Voters Should Keep Marijuana Sales Legal, Retired Cops Say (Op-Ed)” (originally published by CommonWealth Beacon): https://www.marijuanamoment.net/massachusetts-voters-should-keep-marijuana-sales-legal-retired-cops-say-op-ed/
#LetKentuckyVote #LegalizeKentucky #EndProhibition #CannabisFreedom #Kentucky #RegulateCannabis #Question8 #PoliceForReform
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