The Yes on 4 Campaign Elevated a Divisive and Hostile Activist to Statewide Prominence Despite Forewarning

The list of problems with the Question 4 campaign is long, and this postmortem will examine the major issues in depth one by one.

Part 1 (released on October 17, 2025) analyzed the decision to run a policy out of touch with public opinion as indicated by polling, against the recommendations of the Massachusetts ACLU and Dewey Square Group strategists hired by the campaign.

Part 2.1 (released on October 27, 2025) partially analyzes the campaign’s costly handling of a polarizing psychedelics activist and underground practitioner.

WHY THE CAMPAIGN FELL SHORT

2. The Campaign Elevated a Divisive and Hostile Activist to Statewide Prominence Despite Forewarning

2.1 A Substantial Risk and a Misinformation Blitz

A Substantial Risk

As affirmed by one of the campaign’s chief strategists in the aforementioned podcast last year, it is important to electoral success to have a united community behind a measure:

Question 4 campaign consultant Lynda Tocci (“the strategy brain” of the campaign): I think one of the things that is really important [...] is who is the group behind the Yes or No side that you’re with. Is it a cohesive group? Have you learned how to work together, how to disagree and agree, how to move forward, make decisions? [...] I think that’s a really primary, important part.

On July 10, 2023, New Approach was warned by a high-profile drug policy expert in an email that the campaign was unlikely to succeed in part because of “the groups on the ground” in Massachusetts:

I have to decline to get involved. I’ve heard complaints by local groups on the ground in OR and CO who felt left out, and at the same time I have major concerns about the groups on the ground in MA, so I don’t see any scenario where this goes well. [...] My honest opinion is that Massachusetts is just not ready.

One of the faces of Massachusetts psychedelics reform was James Davis, the leader of the advocacy group Bay Staters for Natural Medicine (now rebranded as Bay Staters for Creative Well-Being). He and his group were credited with significant accomplishments, particularly decriminalization resolutions passed in multiple cities and towns.

But Davis was a divisive figure, which New Approach had at least a hint of long before the campaign, since a New Approach staff member allegedly witnessed Davis insult a non-white advocate with a racially prejudiced remark (the New Approach staff member informed me of this). And Davis was far from the only public-facing advocate in the state, as evidenced by the joint press release he issued with local veteran Mike Botelho and Jamie Morey on July 17, 2023.

Yet when New Approach ramped up its advocacy in Massachusetts, practically the only notable grassroots advocate it involved in drafting the legislation, and pitched a major partnership to, was Davis. This was reflected in an official response to criticism that the campaign began “without consulting local advocates.” The response noted Davis’s early involvement and no one else’s. A July 2023 email exchange between Davis and a New Approach staff member shows Davis was provided specific draft language, invited to broadly weigh in on the ballot question proposal, and encouraged to partner with the campaign for “public education, coalition building, and signature gathering.”

On August 1, 2023, the campaign gave $35,000 to Davis’s organization, comprising the official ballot committee’s only donation to a nonprofit. Davis’s organization endorsed the home cultivation version of the ballot question the next day. Legally, the ballot committee could “pay and expend money or other things of value solely” to promote the ballot measure, so the large donation signaled campaign leadership thought Davis would be an asset. In fact, Davis remained intractably opposed to the campaign, despite the nominal endorsement.

That it was politically risky for the ballot committee to elevate Davis was clear. Davis’s nonprofit provided access to underground psychedelic therapy, championed politically unpopular unregulated cultivation and distribution of psychedelics, and publicly declared it “[stood] in opposition to the corporations trying to charge people thousands of dollars for [natural psychedelics],” a category that could arguably include all the legal psilocybin therapy businesses in Oregon, where the typical cost of a treatment session was $1,000 or more, under the state-regulated framework backed by New Approach.

Campaign finance law guaranteed the donation to Bay Staters for Natural Medicine would shortly become public, disclosing the ballot committee’s de facto endorsement of Davis’s organization. At best, this endorsement would undercut the campaign’s ostensible focus on “licensed, supervised psychedelic therapy.” At worst, it would tie Davis and his organization to the ballot committee in the event of a scandal, such as a tragic outcome of unregulated psychedelic use or an allegation of serious misconduct, potentially tanking the campaign.

The decision to donate to Davis’s psychedelics decriminalization nonprofit was made even after internal polling showed the most popular arguments in favor of the ballot measure were:

If the campaign had not provided Davis (who was not a healthcare provider, researcher, or veteran) $35,000 for his nonprofit, but had still wanted to donate to a complementary organization, the ballot committee could have spent that money supporting a healthcare advocacy, research, or veterans nonprofit instead. Polling suggests such an alternative would have generated more enthusiasm from the public, and been less politically risky, than the donation to Bay Staters for Natural Medicine.

Although Davis purported to be representing a coalition including veteran Mike Botelho and Jamie Morey (married to a veteran), to my knowledge, New Approach never spoke to Botelho, and a New Approach staff member met Morey for the first time on September 20, 2023, nearly two months after the measure language had been finalized with Davis’s input. Consequently, New Approach was not aware that Davis had concealed the offer to weigh in on policy, and his involvement in the drafting process, from Botelho and Morey, and that Davis had not been authorized to negotiate with the campaign unilaterally on behalf of his veteran community co-leaders.

To my knowledge, the campaign also did not speak to any Bay Staters for Natural Medicine board members, apart from Davis, before authorizing the $35,000 donation. The publicly listed clerk was based in Taiwan. The publicly listed treasurer was, by her own account, on the verge of leaving the organization at the time, and she characterized Davis as “verbally abusive,” expressed fear he had “forged documents,” and claimed she “[had] no clue about any donations or earnings Baystaters has.” Speaking with these board members might have made the campaign more wary of Davis’s nonprofit, which had not yet received 501(c)(3) tax exempt status or made public any detailed financial filings (the nonprofit retroactively filed state-mandated financial disclosures for 2022-2023 just a few months ago, which I confirmed over the phone with the state attorney general’s office).

Another reason the campaign might have kept its distance from Bay Staters for Natural Medicine was its combination of legislative advocacy and providing services. Under Massachusetts’s strict lobbying laws, a nonprofit must register with the state secretary and make certain disclosures if it spends more than $250 per year “to promote, oppose, or influence legislation” and “pay[s] a salary or fee to any member for any activities performed for the benefit of the group or organization.” In describing its network of psychedelic guides, Davis’s nonprofit claimed it needed “financial support with donations to sustain its progress, hold events and do marketing that lift all ships, and ensure that giant corporations do not destroy this network with corrupt state legislation” and recommended guides “give 30% of any [compensation] they receive [for facilitation] as a donation.” While Davis later claimed in March 2024 that his “facilitator network” had not spent “any” of the “about $100,000” it had raised since its June 2022 launch, the launch included Bay Staters for Natural Medicine claiming to be “hiring skilled and compassionate people as psychedelic facilitators.” That Davis’s nonprofit was not registered with the state secretary was publicly available information, and, while Bay Staters for Natural Medicine may have complied with lobbying laws, its public statements and unregulated lobbying risked attracting embarrassing legal scrutiny.

Furthermore, if the campaign had asked one of Massachusetts’s most prominent drug policy advocates, Shaleen Title, about Davis, she would have shared that Davis had a history of alleged unethical behavior. In 2024, Title publicly claimed that “People in MA, women and POC especially, have been privately warning each other for years about James Davis/Bay Staters.”

As Title might have predicted, Davis soon turned on his would-be ballot committee collaborators. A campaign spokesperson disclosed: “It was almost like... once that money was donated, then [Davis’s] attitude totally changed.” The spokesperson went on to observe Davis appeared to have kept the donation from the campaign largely secret, which was, indeed, the case. As previously referenced, Davis also hid his involvement with drafting the measure, falsely claiming the ballot committee “did not consult with any organization in [the grassroots advocacy] coalition.”

A Misinformation Blitz

A little over a month after his nonprofit received $35,000 from the campaign, and just a few days after being privately invited by New Approach to a coalition meeting, Davis lambasted the ballot question in a public presentation to “more than 60 lawmakers and staff,” and his organization published an op-ed attacking the measure the next day. His criticism focused on inadequate decriminalization and “the regulatory structure of the program,” which he implied were consequences of his exclusion from the drafting process.

In reality, Davis himself was significantly responsible for the measure as written, particularly the parts he ostensibly took most issue with. In his correspondence with New Approach, he had been specifically encouraged to provide “feedback on any aspects” of the “decrim/home cultivation language,” and he was asked explicitly if “[he] and the [grassroots] coalition have thoughts about” what regulatory agency would be most appropriate. Rather than replying with substantive policy feedback, Davis had answered “our top priority is community education. Modest, home growing (microdosing) excites volunteers vis a vis An Act Relative to Plant Medicine and the six cities we’ve decriminalized.” As previously mentioned, Question 4’s decriminalization provisions were more far reaching than those in An Act Relative to Plant Medicine, and Davis’s nonprofit had endorsed the final version of the measure on August 2, 2023.

But rather than promptly correct the record, the campaign let Davis define the public narrative practically unopposed. As a consequence, Davis hammered the ballot question in major media outlets like The Boston Globe and WBUR month after month after month as, essentially, a poorly-written, out-of-touch cash grab pitting locals against an out-of-state PAC. Simultaneously, he organized on-the-ground opposition to the campaign, using his nonprofit volunteers to disrupt signature gathering, to canvass against the measure, and to encourage lawmakers and state organizations, including the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society, the Massachusetts Medical Society, the Massachusetts Fraternal Order of Police, the Massachusetts Municipal Association, and multiple other organizations, to oppose the ballot question.

Bay Staters for Natural Medicine’s talking points were subsequently incorporated into opposition statements from:

· The Massachusetts Psychiatric Society: “Decriminalization can occur through legislation”; “Venture capital millionaires have spent over $5 million to get this question on the ballot and to advertise it… If there was no money to be made, there wouldn’t be a vote.”

· The Massachusetts Medical Society: “We support the decriminalization of psychedelic substances”; “Contrary to claims that H.4255 will increase access to mental health care, these services will be expensive.”

· The Massachusetts College of Emergency Physicians (MACEP): “MACEP would support decriminalization over legalization.”

· The Massachusetts Municipal Association: “We feel it would be unwise to create yet another unelected commission similarly prone to regulatory capture. The Commission and its Advisory Board will be highly susceptible to commercial psychedelic interests”; “We believe the public would be better served through decriminalization, study, and education.”

· The Libertarian Party of Massachusetts: “The history of such agencies, particularly in Oregon, shows a pattern of conflicts of interest, financial mismanagement, and failures to fulfill legal obligations”; “The costs associated with psychedelic treatments, as demonstrated in Oregon, are prohibitively high”; “the law fails to adequately protect personal innovation, such as home-grown psychedelics, by criminalizing their transport”; “The ballot initiative was spearheaded by out-of-state interests without consulting local advocates.”

And, by early February 2024, Davis had utilized his narrative to convince the municipal governments of tourist-haven Provincetown (on December 11, 2023) and Boston-adjacent, Tufts University-home Medford (on February 6, 2024) to pass resolutions criticizing Question 4 as “a ballot question written by a DC-based PAC.”