The owners of the 19 recreational cannabis dispensaries in Cambridge and Somerville are trying to keep from greening out ahead of a November ballot measure that, if passed, would kill their industry a mere eight years after the people of Massachusetts voted it into existence.
“I don’t have a crystal ball,” said Michael MacNeil, CEO of The Boston Garden, which operates recreational dispensaries in Cambridge, Somerville and Athol that employ roughly 45 people altogether. “But [Question 8]’s a major concern. It’s hard enough today for cannabis retail businesses to stay profitable and repay their investors.”
Richard Harding, owner of GreenSoul Dispensary in Central Square, said seeing Question 8 make the ballot was “a gut punch, another blow to folks like me.” The question, formally “An Act to Restore Sensible Marijuana Policy,” would prohibit recreational marijuana sales statewide beginning in 2028. It would allow limited possession to remain legal and leave the state’s medical marijuana program intact. Question 8 is backed by The Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts, which argues legal recreational sales have made marijuana more accessible to minors, led to more people driving while high and negatively affected public health overall. The coalition did not respond to a request for comment.
The economics of repeal
MacNeill said the industry unambiguously does more good than harm.
“I see people of every walk of life in my dispensaries every single day who find cannabis tremendously useful to their physical and mental health,” MacNeill said. “I completely believe it’s been a net positive for society.”
He said it has also helped budgets in cash-strapped Massachusetts cities and towns. Cambridge and Somerville together brought in roughly $765,000 in local cannabis tax revenue in fiscal 2025, while recreational marijuana generated about $340 million in state and local tax revenue statewide.
Losing recreational cannabis “would be a massive hit to Cambridge’s budget, which is already under tremendous pressure from police and fire departments and other city services,” MacNeill said. The provision in Question 8 allowing recreational dispensaries to apply for medical marijuana licenses would offer little refuge for most operators, he said. They would be competing for a much smaller pool of registered medical patients, and he predicted most would not survive the transition. He declined to say whether it would affect his own dispensaries.
A veteran’s perspective
Harding did not mince words, saying passage of the ballot question “would be a doomsday scenario.”
He said opening GreenSoul dispensary cost millions of dollars and more than half a decade navigating Massachusetts’ legal cannabis bureaucracy.
An original advocate for the 2016 legalization campaign, Harding later became a leading voice in Cambridge’s fight to give Economic Empowerment applicants, entrepreneurs from communities disproportionately harmed by marijuana prohibition, a head start in the newly legal market. In 2019, Harding and other advocates pushed successfully for a controversial two-year exclusivity period that reserved new recreational permits for those applicants, arguing they otherwise stood little chance against established medical dispensaries and larger operators.
Then came the challenge of opening one himself.
GreenSoul’s path to Central Square wound through the pandemic and a maze of state and local approvals, real estate costs and bills for lawyers, architects and consultants before finally opening in March 2025.
Less than two years later, Harding said the looming threat of Question 8 has already forced GreenSoul to put its next moves on hold. Plans for a Davis Square dispensary and a cultivation operation are stalled until after the November vote, while prospective investors have grown wary of putting more money into the company.
“Some of the investors that we attract are like, ‘Whoa, whoa, slow up. We don’t know what’s going on in Massachusetts. Let’s chill out,’” Harding said.
For Harding, the prospect is particularly frustrating because he believes Massachusetts has yet to fulfill the promises of equity that accompanied legalization. Instead, he argues, the system has largely benefited larger, better-financed cannabis companies, while its high cost and complexity have kept many entrepreneurs from communities disproportionately targeted by marijuana prohibition from ever opening their doors.
“It’s big money to be able to sustain the long, arduous, loaded process that is entering the legal cannabis space to do it the right way,” Harding said. “It’s not snack money. The problem is that of the 122 Economic Empowerment applicants, most of them will never open.”
Cambridge Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui, who championed the city’s preference for Economic Empowerment applicants, agreed. She said most of Cambridge’s 10 operating cannabis retailers are owned by Economic Empowerment applicants or Women and Minority Business Enterprises, with another five retailers and two delivery operators working toward opening.
“Repealing recreational marijuana sales now would have very real consequences for Cambridge businesses and entrepreneurs that would face shuttering their doors after investing years of work and significant resources under the legal framework Massachusetts created,” Siddiqui said in a statement.
A system reset
Not every local cannabis-related business owner sees Question 8 as a threat.
Alex Cohen, a hemp farmer and owner of Healing Hemp LLC, which has a Union Square storefront and an Ashby farm, shares Harding’s belief that Massachusetts’ regulatory system has favored large cannabis companies over smaller, locally rooted businesses.
But where Harding sees those problems as reasons to fix the industry, Cohen sees them as reasons to tear the existing system down. “I want these dispensaries to be closed,” Cohen said. “I do not want the CCC regulating my cannabis.”
Cohen’s business operates outside the recreational dispensary system by selling hemp products, including some containing delta-9 THC, the compound primarily responsible for marijuana’s intoxicating effects. Cannabis containing no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight can qualify as hemp rather than marijuana and falls under a separate regulatory system. Cohen said customers can buy products at his shop without the ID checks, seed-to-sale tracking and stringent security requirements imposed on recreational dispensaries.
“We want local craft cannabis,” Cohen said. “We do not want corporate cannabis.”
In 45 days, we’ll find out what voters think.
A stronger
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