Why The Question 4 Campaign Fell Short: Part 5

WHY THE CAMPAIGN FELL SHORT

5. The Campaign Exaggerated the Risks of its Proposal Through Disorganized and Misleading Messaging In Contradiction to its Own Polling

An Early Capitulation

During a recorded panel in December 2024 (complete, rough AI transcript here), Yes on 4 campaign director Jared Moffat identified the attorney general’s office summary of the ballot question—a short description of the ballot question included on the ballot and in the state’s official voter guide—as the single “biggest” contributor to Question 4’s defeat:

And I think in our case, what, um, again, a lot of things, I think, you know, kind of went wrong or weren't, um, that led, that contributed to [Question 4] not passing. But I think, you know, the biggest one is that ballot summary that I mentioned earlier. Um, you know, the attorney general—again, in each state it's different—but the attorney general writes a summary of what the ballot initiative does. And I think that that ballot summary was not helpful. I think when voters read that summary, I think they, um, they, they concluded, a lot of those middle voters, concluded that they weren't in support. […] If you go and look at the Colorado ballot measure that passed in 2022 and you read the ballot summary that voters, um, considered before they voted, it's very, very different from what appeared on the ballot in Massachusetts. 

What Moffat did not mention was that—despite knowledge the ballot summary was confusing and polled “very badly” as early as fall 2023—the campaign had chosen not to sue for more favorable language, even though suing is standard practice in Massachusetts and across the country under such circumstances. 

Excerpt from text thread on the attorney general’s office summary

The campaign’s strategic leadership was well aware confused voters tend to default to rejecting proposals and, in the words of Question 4 campaign consultant Conor Yunits during a 2024 podcast (complete, rough AI transcript here): “Generally speaking, people only need one reason to vote no [on a ballot proposal].” This understanding appeared to inform the campaign’s officially preferred characterization of Question 4—as reflected in the excerpt from official campaign literature below—which boiled down to: legalizing regulated, on-site-only psychedelic therapy and decriminalizing personal use of certain therapeutic psychedelics.

The discrepancies between this campaign-favored description and the summary from the attorney general’s office, excerpt displayed below, were vast.

While the campaign’s description led with the legalization of “psychedelic-assisted therapy,” the attorney general’s office summary did not even contain the word “therapy.” In fact, the summary made no reference to therapeutic or medicinal intent at all, despite the full text of the ballot question being unequivocal regarding the proposal’s therapeutic motive and packed with references to “therapy” (word used 15 times).

Rather, in the absence of any reference to therapy, mandatory preparation and integration, potential health benefits, or safety pre-screening, the attorney general’s office summary indicated that legally purchasing and using psychedelics under the initiative’s framework would be as easy as buying and consuming an alcoholic beverage at a bar. The summary claimed approving the initiative would mean “[psychedelics] could be purchased at an approved location for use under the supervision of a licensed facilitator,” but it did not explain what this meant. The summary did not provide descriptions of “an approved location,” “use under the supervision,” and “a licensed facilitator.” Moreover, the summary did not mention any requirement for legally purchasing psychedelics “at an approved location” other than being 21 or older. Further muddying the waters, the summary paired the sentence about purchasing psychedelics for use under supervision with a claim the initiative “would otherwise prohibit any retail sale of natural psychedelic substances” (emphasis in italics mine), implying the sale of psychedelics at “approved” locations would be a kind of retail sale, akin to purchasing a beer at a restaurant for on-site consumption.

In addition to mischaracterizing Question 4’s legalization framework, the attorney general’s office summary led with one of the most polarizing elements of the proposal—“[allowing] persons aged 21 and older to grow […] certain natural psychedelic substances”—and framed the proposal’s decriminalization provisions as “[allowing]” and “[authorizing]” expansive personal use rather than as “removing criminal penalties for limited personal use” as in the text of the law. This framing obscured Question 4’s criminal justice reform element (decriminalization), which internal polling had suggested was relatively popular, as evidenced by an excerpt from June 2023 survey results:  

And while the summary included no explanation of the “supervised use” of psychedelics, it devoted most of the second paragraph to detailing the “personal use” provisions: 

It would also allow persons aged 21 and older to grow these psychedelic substances in a 12-foot by 12-foot area at their home and use these psychedelic substances at their home. This proposed law would authorize persons aged 21 or older to possess up to one gram of psilocybin, one gram of psilocyn, one gram of dimethyltryptamine, 18 grams of mescaline, and 30 grams of ibogaine (“personal use amount”), in addition to whatever they might grow at their home, and to give away up to the personal use amount to a person aged 21 or over.

It is unclear why the summary did not describe “supervised use” and “personal use” with equivalent brevity, but it is clear the summary was disadvantageous to the campaign—accentuating Question 4’s most controversial elements (virtually unregulated home cultivation and personal use) while excluding and obscuring Question 4’s most appealing features (regulated therapy for hard-to-treat health conditions and lifting draconian criminal penalties). As previously referenced, subsequent focus group research in fall 2023 found the summary discouraged support for Question 4. According to Moffat, this was related to the language “[making] ppl [sic] think [Question 4]’s like cannabis legalization.” Concern that the ballot language would cause voters to think Question 4 would implement cannabis-style “full legalization” for psychedelics was reiterated in an early summer 2024 analysis by FM3 Research—commissioned by the campaign—which flagged ballot language elements as challenges:

Still, in the absence of a lawsuit to make the attorney general’s office summary less prejudicial against the campaign, the summary—first published in September 2023—was placed, word-for-word, onto the 2024 ballot seen by every Massachusetts voter. Additionally, the summary was duly included in the state’s official voter guide, which the state government promoted online, physically distributed through local election offices and libraries, and mailed to households across Massachusetts.

The attorney general’s office summary laid the groundwork for other prejudicial language to be added to the ballot and official voter guide as well: the official title and one-sentence explanation for the ballot question. Although, to my knowledge, the campaign was successful in slightly improving the one-sentence explanation through communication with the attorney general’s office absent a lawsuit, the final language remained significantly at odds with the substance of Question 4. The initial title and one-sentence explanation presented by the attorney general’s office in March 2024 can be seen here: 

The final title and one-sentence explanation—included on the ballot alongside the lengthy attorney general’s office summary—are below:

While it was beneficial for the final one-sentence explanation to explicitly reference “licensed supervision” and lead with mention of supervised use—unlike the attorney general’s office summary it was paired with—it still made no mention of therapy and did not even hint at the ballot question’s therapeutic intent and safety pre-screening. And the one-sentence explanation was displayed on the ballot immediately before a statement of fiscal consequences (see above) that referenced “a 15% state excise tax for the sale of natural psychedelic substances” and the possibility of generating “local sales tax revenue,” further suggesting a retail sales model akin to that of alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco. Moreover, the fiscal note declared “the revenue generating impact is unknown due to the lack of data” and “the measure would also create an oversight commission that would require dedicated resources” —without specifying an estimated cost—suggested the ballot question would not generate tax revenue for the state’s general fund, additionally undermining the proposal’s appeal.

For comparison, it is worth examining the ballot language for a similar initiative in Massachusetts: that of the state’s 2012 medical cannabis proposal, advanced by another campaign that hired Dewey Square Group. In that election, opponents of medical cannabis successfully sued to make the ballot language less favorable for passage. Even so, the final ballot language for the 2012 medical cannabis initiative was far more beneficial for proponents than the final ballot language for the 2024 psychedelic therapy initiative, despite the proposals’ similarities.

As reflected in the excerpt below, the attorney general’s office summary of the medical cannabis initiative highlighted the proposal’s therapeutic intent and framed the proposal’s provisioning of cannabis to “qualifying patients” as “[eliminating] state criminal and civil penalties for medical use” rather than “[allowing]” or “[authorizing]” therapeutic cannabis use. Furthermore, the summary detailed reassuring safeguards—requiring a professionally diagnosed qualifying condition and a written certification of “likely […] net benefit from medical use of marijuana” from a treating physician—at the beginning. 

Even though the medical cannabis initiative, like Question 4, contained a controversial home cultivation provision targeted by opponents, the summary only mentioned it in the sixth paragraph (see excerpt below) and emphasized restrictions—the cannabis must be grown “in a closed, locked facility” and must not exceed “a 60-day supply of marijuana for the patient’s own use”—leaving unmentioned the penalty for “willful violations” of these rules alone was merely losing one’s medical cannabis card, and it required a finding of “a preponderance of evidence standard” in a hearing to enforce. Directly after the home cultivation paragraph, the summary described additional reassuring safeguards: substantial penalties for misusing the home cultivation provisions to engage in illegal drug trafficking: 

The attorney general’s office summary of Question 4, on the other hand, did not mention that the proposal required home grown psychedelics to be “secured from access by persons

under 21 years of age.” Rather, the summary stated the law would “allow persons aged 21 and older to grow these psychedelic substances in a 12-foot by 12-foot area at their home and use these psychedelic substances at their home.” As is evident, while the medical cannabis initiative summary repeatedly showcased guardrails, the psychedelic therapy initiative summary repeatedly ignored or downplayed them. Further illustrating the point, the summary for Question 4 inaccurately characterized the proposal as permitting persons aged 21 and older to possess psychedelics “at schools,” claiming “state and local governments could continue to restrict the possession and use of these psychedelic substances in public buildings or at schools” (emphasis in italics mine). In fact, Question 4 explicitly did not authorize “the possession or consumption of natural psychedelic substances on the grounds of or within a public or private school” under any circumstances.  

The one-sentence explanation of the medical cannabis measure was also markedly more flattering than the one-sentence explanation of Question 4, as is apparent by viewing the two explanations side by side:

As can be seen above, the one-sentence explanation of the medical cannabis initiative framed the initiative as criminal justice reform-enabled, state-regulated therapy with safeguards by:

By contrast, the one-sentence explanation of the psychedelic therapy initiative was relatively vague, and it made no reference to therapy, therapeutic use of psychedelics, or criminal justice reform, despite all three being core elements of Question 4. Unlike the one-sentence explanation for the medical cannabis initiative, the one-sentence explanation for the psychedelic therapy initiative did not include:

Consequently, as alluded to in Moffat’s opining on Question 4’s detrimental ballot language, the ballot language for Colorado’s 2022 psychedelic therapy initiative (displayed below) was more similar to that of Massachusetts’ 2012 medical cannabis initiative than to that of Massachusetts’ psychedelic therapy initiative—even though the two psychedelic therapy initiatives were virtually identical. 

Like that of the 2012 medical cannabis initiative, the ballot summary of Colorado’s 2022 psychedelic therapy initiative led with validating the initiative’s therapeutic framing, using “natural medicine” to refer to natural psychedelics, and highlighting the initiative’s least controversial elements, touting a state-regulated psychedelic therapy program with safeguards for “public health and safety.” Like that of the medical cannabis initiative, the ballot summary of Colorado’s psychedelic therapy initiative brought up the most polarizing part of the proposal, in its case personal use provisions, very briefly and toward the end of the summary, using phrasing that suggested a relatively conservative and therapeutic design—“limited personal possession, use, and uncompensated sharing of natural medicine; providing specified protections under state law, including criminal and civil immunity, for authorized providers and users of natural medicine” (emphasis in italics mine). The ballot language for the Colorado initiative also included “removal and reduction of criminal penalties” and “decriminalizes,” emphasizing criminal justice reform elements. The language painted an appealing and coherent, albeit misleading, picture of what the initiative wanted to accomplish (providing regulated access to natural, therapeutic substances in the form of “supervised care” and decriminalizing their use) and what it would like (launching the development of a state-regulated “supervised” therapy program, rigorously regulated “to protect public health and safety,” while permitting modest personal use outside the regulated framework for therapeutic purposes”). 

The ballot language for Massachusetts’ Question 4, on the other hand, made it difficult for voters to understand either the intended purposes of combining expansive personal use with regulated, facilitated access or what the law’s real-world implementation would look like. As interpreted from the ballot language alone, Question 4 proposed:

This meant that many voters (up to 13% of those who voted according to postmortem polling), whose sole meaningful source of information about Question 4 was the ballot language, were only presented with an inaccurate and unflattering portrayal of the proposal with which to inform their vote. And another large segment of voters (up to 22% of those who voted according to postmortem polling), whose primary source of information about Question 4 was the official voter guide, were similarly misinformed. 

The consequences of this are suggested by other postmortem survey results:

As a reminder, the campaign’s focus group testing in fall 2023 showed the attorney general’s office summary convinced people Question 4’s framework was “like cannabis legalization.” Overall, the ballot language played into public fears about drug use in numerous ways—without referencing how natural psychedelics are uniquely safe (like being nonaddictive) and potentially therapeutic (like possibly reducing problematic drug abuse by treating addiction). By not legally contesting the language, and then later actively proliferating it, the campaign implicitly cosigned the misleading messaging. Had the campaign instead filed suit and obtained more favorable ballot language, it is plausible, if not necessarily likely, that Question 4 would have eked out an election night victory.

An Appeal to Ignorance

In the words of Yes on 4 campaign director Jared Moffat in an October 9, 2024, text message exchange with the campaign’s educational outreach director (me) (excerpt below): “[Dewey Square Group] always had this sheepish attitude about decrim [sic] like it’s something to be ashamed of.” This was in reference to the Dewey Square Group strategists employed by the ballot committee encouraging consultants to avoid mentioning the decriminalization provisions, even up to a month before election day, when presenting on the ballot question—strategic guidance that was part of a longstanding pattern.

Rather than pointedly challenging public misconceptions about psychedelics’ risks, the campaign reinforced them through official messaging, especially in justifying Question 4’s regulatory framework and touting the purported absence of take home access as a selling point. This began practically immediately—less than two weeks after the ballot committee filed initial paperwork in July 2023, WBUR reported a campaign spokesperson “stressed that New Approach has focused on ‘regulated, licensed, supervised psychedelic therapy’ in other states. ‘Not retail, not legalization, not for take home.’”

But Question 4, like New Approach’s 2022 psychedelic therapy initiative in Colorado, did, in fact, allow psychedelics “for take home” through its personal use provisions. Moreover, Question 4 arguably allowed for more “take home” than did Massachusetts’ cannabis legalization framework. By default, adults 21 and older in Massachusetts could take home no more than an ounce of cannabis (including up to a maximum five grams of concentrate)—either purchased or gifted—and could possess no more than 10 ounces of cannabis in their home (in addition to whatever cannabis they themselves grew from no more than six plants). Based on research findings, the ounce of cannabis that constituted Massachusetts’ baseline take-home limit was approximately equivalent to 43 to 89 standard doses of cannabis or—if the average adult Washington cannabis purchaser according to a recent publication in Addiction Research & Theory was nationally representative—around a three-week supply. 

Although Question 4 did not authorize selling psychedelics for unsupervised at-home use, it did implicitly allow purchasing, and explicitly allow being gifted, large quantities of psychedelics for unsupervised at-home use, specifically:

Truth be told, the aforementioned “personal use amount[s]” of psychedelics—which Question 4 authorized any adult 21 and older to possess on their person and freely give away—exceeded lifetime supplies for many individuals, based on epidemiological data. And, in addition to these “personal use amount[s],” Question 4 allowed any adult 21 and older to possess “any natural psychedelic substances produced in excess of a personal use amount” in their home—with no quantity limits—so long as the substances were “produced” from plants or fungi they themselves cultivated at home within a 12 foot by 12 foot area. 

In recapitulation, legalization for cannabis in Massachusetts meant any adult 21 and older could purchase—from a licensed and heavily regulated store—no more than around a few weeks’ worth of cannabis to take home at any given time. Under a New Approach framework, “not legalization” of natural psychedelics in Massachusetts would mean any adult 21 and older could lawfully obtain—from a generous individual, nonprofit, religious organization, or illegal retailer—multiple lifetime supplies of up to five different psychedelics to take home in a single outing. On the merits, New Approach’s Colorado and Massachusetts formulations of psychedelics “not [for] retail, not legalization, not for take home” authorized more expansive unsupervised personal use of federally illicit drugs than Massachusetts’ legal cannabis system.

Consequently, the campaign’s strategic leadership thought most Massachusetts voters would not knowingly approve of Question 4’s provisions for virtually unregulated possession, production, and distribution of psychedelics. And they reacted by trying to obfuscate the proposal’s broad decriminalization components, ostensibly to convince large demographics of voters that Question 4 was a relatively conservative therapeutic access proposal—a decision leadership of the Massachusetts ACLU rejected as both ethically and strategically unsound, contributing to the Massachusetts ACLU’s decision not to endorse the ballot question.

A tactic strategic leadership endorsed for persuading these demographics was leaning into voters’ preconceived views about the dangers of psychedelics and drug use. For example, the approved presentation slide deck, created by Dewey Square Group, did not mention Question 4 contained any decriminalization or personal use elements as of the start of August 2024. Rather, it included a slide (below) claiming the measure would not provide “a therapy for everyone” and would not allow “recreational use” or “immediate access to natural psychedelic-assisted therapy”—implying there would be “an 18 to 24 month” process before even “one substance” of the initiative would be available:

Not only was this extremely misleading—in truth, the ballot question would create immediate lawful access to psychedelic-assisted therapy and recreational use through its personal use framework—but, by choosing to advertise these purported features, the slide tacitly endorsed negative and inaccurate views about personal drug use and liberalizing drug policy reform:

Relatedly, a widely used, approved presentation script, as referenced in a June 2024 internal email thread, included a line claiming the ballot committee recognized natural psychedelics were “powerful substances” that the campaign did not want to be casually accessible. The script also described the implementation of the regulated framework post-passage and the steps of the regulated psychedelic therapy, without mentioning decriminalization or personal use, as reflected in the two slides below:

The elaborate and novel—to most voters—multipart process for utilizing regulated psychedelic therapy, as opposed to the retail model voters were familiar with for alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco, further reinforced the common, but factually ungrounded, belief that even psilocybin, the most well-studied of the psychedelics included in Question 4, was substantially more dangerous than already fully legalized substances in Massachusetts. A negative connotation was also assigned to liberal drug policy through a color-coded map of psychedelic legislative developments nationwide, included as a slide in the presentation deck (see below), which colored states that had “decriminalized or legalized” psychedelics via ballot initiative—Oregon and Colorado—in a warning red:

Altogether, the presentation slide deck created by Dewey Square Group was confusing, misleading, played into negative stereotypes about psychedelics, and was out of alignment with the campaign’s strongest arguments—as indicated by internal polling as well as “key findings” of FM3 Research’s analysis, specifically:

Even though the analytical report from the campaign’s pollster specifically warned that “highlighting the potential to cause psychosis” was harmful to the campaign, and formal opposition had explicitly highlighted the purported danger of psychedelics for individuals with schizophrenia as early as March 2024, Dewey Square Group’s presentation prominently mentioned schizophrenia—a psychosis-causing psychiatric condition—in the initial slide after the title slide (see below):

The standalone quote in the slide, the only quote in the entire presentation:

Muddying the pitch even more, the presentation devoted three slides to “Update [sic] In Psychedelic Legislation in Other States”—including the color-coded map and two other slides detailing the three, distinct policy frameworks in Oregon, Colorado, and Utah—despite the lowest polling argument for the ballot question being that psychedelic therapy had been legalized in other states (30% found it “very convincing” in June 2024). 

In contrast, while addressing a “PTSD crisis” within the veteran community was a top-polling proponent argument (49% found it “very convincing” in June 2024), the presentation dedicated only a single slide, which did not mention veterans, to describing the mental health crisis.

And although polling showed parts of Question 4’s personal use provisions were polarizing, not mentioning decriminalization in our presentations did not stop our audiences, or our organized opposition, from routinely raising the topic themselves.

On June 12, 2024, less than six weeks after I was hired as the campaign’s primary internal educator, I flagged our messaging as self-defeating in the aforementioned email thread:

To my knowledge, home cultivation is being brought up again and again in our interactions, whether we bring it up or not…  I’m wondering if we can portray the guardrails as more about giving people access to high quality care/protecting them from bad actors, rather than protecting people from psychedelics… I worry that having BOTH sides (us and the opposition) delegitimize home cultivation and personal use is a problem. It makes our initiative seem hypocritical… What I don’t want is for everyone skeptical about home cultivation to come away from every interaction with the campaign feeling actively affirmed in their belief that home cultivation and personal use is irresponsible. We don’t need to challenge their thinking directly but I worry about people coming away with the impression we are hiding the ball or haven’t thought this through.

In response, Yes on 4 lead strategist Lynda Tocci acknowledged: “We can a do [sic] better job framing and setting [the guardrails talking point] up, as you suggest.” However, as Moffat noted in his October 2024 text message, the “sheepish attitude about decrim [sic] like it’s something to be ashamed of” on the part of Tocci and Jennifer Manley, the campaign’s two Dewey Square Group strategists, persisted. And the slide deck was only substantively revised a couple months later—in collaboration with the campaign’s community outreach director Jamie Morey—in response to me escalating concern over the presentation by directly appealing to Moffat in late July 2024.

An Uncoordinated Approach

In a text conversation on July 29, 2024, Yes on 4 campaign director Jared Moffat expressed frustration upon learning the campaign’s ballot committee chair/campaign manager Danielle McCourt, along with the campaign’s Dewey Square Group leadership, had been proliferating Question 4’s low-polling ballot summary (“the ag summary”) to voters for months:

During the conversation, I disclosed to Moffat that his correspondence that day was “the first time” I had been told not to share the ballot summary—in fact, I had “been encouraged to send it out.” I had also not previously been made aware of the summary’s very poor reception in focus group testing. 

In between responding to Moffat over text, I forwarded him emails in which Dewey Square Group and McCourt had promoted the ballot summary, which they had done consistently—at least as long as I had been employed by the campaign. Examples included:

However, when Moffat—following our conversation—directed McCourt on July 29, 2024, to cease promoting the ballot summary, McCourt tersely acknowledged the instruction while denying that the campaign had been promoting it. That denial was difficult to reconcile with her prior communications—as a side by side comparison of her July 30 reply to Moffat and her June 27 reply to me illustrates:

On June 27, McCourt told me my draft email—with ballot summary attached—“[looked] good” and recommended I attach “the one pager and FAQ doc as well.” A month later, she claimed to Moffat the campaign had been “promoting one-pagers and FAQs and not the summary.” 

And two weeks after Moffat instructed McCourt to prevent the summary from being promoted, Tocci recommended campaign staff bring “a couple copies of the AG summary” as educational material to a community event on an email thread with Moffat:

Although this example was the last time, to my knowledge, that Tocci or any campaign official intentionally promoted the unflattering ballot summary—Tocci linked to it “by accident” a month later—a lack of coordination continued to hamper effective messaging.

Shortly after Moffat delivered his definitive guidance on the ballot summary to McCourt, his attention turned to the campaign’s presentation slide deck at my urging. Moffat, Morey, and I collaboratively revised the deck produced by Dewey Square Group to increase its accuracy and alignment with high-polling arguments—although it retained much of its original structure. Among Moffat’s specific recommendations was the removal of the color-coded policy map, which Morey and I agreed with. As previously referenced, the lowest polling argument for the ballot question was that psychedelic therapy had been legalized elsewhere. Morey, speaking for the three of us, promptly updated Tocci in an email that:

We decided that the “updates on other states” slides should probably be scaled back/consolidated to one single slide. Our personal opinion, along with feedback from past participants and the suggestion of the polling numbers, is that MA voters don’t really care that much about what happens in other states to warrant this level of detail.

But the campaign’s Dewey Square Group leadership insisted on retaining the three-slide policy section, citing the fact one of their junior staff members was scheduled to present it. Even though the slated Dewey Square Group presenter was not one of the campaign’s preferred messengers demographically (i.e. not a veteran, physician, etc.), Moffat declined to push the matter further. As a result, the lengthy policy update remained in the official presentation deck through October 2024, even though its retention contradicted both polling data and the unanimous recommendation of the Yes on 4 campaign director (Moffat), educational outreach director (the author), and community outreach director (Morey). 

This said, the deck was still improved. While it retained an overwhelming emphasis on the least controversial component of the ballot question—regulated psychedelic therapy—and a conservative, anti-cannabis industry slant, it no longer contained the journal quote mentioning schizophrenia or the alarming red coloring for states that had legalized psychedelic therapy. In addition to language and visuals more grounded in what polled well—such as repeatedly mentioning veterans and incorporating images of veterans, physicians, and first responders—the deck no longer inaccurately claimed Question 4 would prohibit recreational use and it noted the proposal included decriminalization. And it tactfully framed the personal use provisions of the measure as responsible, stating Question 4 “establishes a compassionate approach grounded in public health and removes criminal penalties for limited personal use.”

This reflected Moffat, Morey, and I developing a language and protocol for pitching decriminalization, based on survey data and our interactions with voters, that we agreed was effective and authentic. We were confident that, as radical as Question 4’s personal use provisions were, they were not harmful and they could be successfully defended on the merits with the right language. When polled as an isolated policy, allowing home cultivation of psychedelics was unpopular, but polling also found majority support for decriminalizing “personal use of plant-based psychedelics.” We thought it was fair to claim Question 4 “remove[d] criminal penalties for limited personal use,” without explicitly mentioning home cultivation and distribution, in so much as “personal possession” could encompass growing and noncommercial exchange and, under Question 4’s framework, would be subject to a few meaningful limits—including no psychedelics on school grounds and no operating a vehicle under the influence. The intention was to signal to audiences—while keeping the focus on psychedelics’ therapeutic potential and not giving a polarizing issue too much airtime—that decriminalization was not a big deal, nothing to be afraid of, and a good thing. If a voter pressed us on details, it would be relatively easy to expand on home cultivation or gifting as integral parts of “a compassionate approach grounded in public health” without seeming shifty—especially for those with positive personal experience with psilocybin, like Morey, lead spokesperson Emily Oneschuk, and me. 

One of my primary roles on the campaign became crafting evidence-based talking points within this foundational framework. In mid-August 2024, I worked with 3-Street principal David Stone to rebut circulating opposition arguments. At the end of August, I was tasked with drafting and sending a persuasive email to discourage a prominent physician from opposing the campaign. My work was praised and, at my suggestion, I was tasked with modifying the initial email into an open letter to the opposition on behalf of the campaign, which was published on September 11, 2024. My revised talking points and open letter were widely praised by senior staff, including New Approach executive director Graham Boyd, who called the letter “outstanding” and noted its “relentless marshaling of evidence.”

In the final months, the campaign increasingly utilized my messaging. I became the principal author of the leave-behind document used in the Boston Globe editorial-board meeting (lightly formatted and revised by Moffat), which Moffat described as “excellent and really helpful.” I also drafted the healthcare-provider sign-on letter, ghost-wrote op-eds and statements, produced rapid response talking points, and wrote key emails to public officials and stakeholders. In the election’s closing weeks, my language was ubiquitous within the campaign—routinely incorporated into communications I had no direct role in generating, such as the ballot question summary for campaign dialers. An experienced staffer reflected on this in a “wrap up” message she kindly sent to me:

I had more than one conversation in which a friend or acquaintance who quoted your talking points to me. Clearly, they had heard or read them somewhere but I knew where they came from. You did great work and had a marked impact on the effort.

But a reluctance or inability on the part of the campaign’s strategic leadership to rapidly disseminate approved messaging—as well as what Moffat characterized as a “sheepish attitude about decrim [sic]”—contributed to official campaign spokespersons regularly being unfamiliar with the latest talking points, as well as basic facts about Question 4, up to less than six weeks before election day. 

Defending home cultivation was a consistent weakness. For example, as reported by Lucid News, the ballot committee’s registered lobbyist, Dewey Square Group consultant Brennan Spencer, was unable to convincingly defend the bill’s decriminalization provisions as late as September 18, 2024, telling voters “that you need” the bill’s allotment of 144 square feet of grow space “to even get enough of the active psychedelic component” in psilocybin mushrooms, as he reported in an internal email. But instead of explicitly encouraging Spencer not to present false and easily refutable statements to voters, Tocci gave him a pleased response: “I do love these reports… Brennan’s are the best… I can tell that you all are sharpening your skills.”

If Spencer had referred to the internal talking points document the campaign had already prepared, he could have used the following approved explanations:

A little over a week after Spencer claimed psilocybin mushrooms were far less potent than they actually are, another Dewey Square Group consultant and campaign spokesperson—Tomás O'Brien—disclosed in an email to me that he had been unaware that Question 4’s decriminalization provisions allowed giving home grown psychedelics away:

Overall, McCourt and the campaign’s Dewey Square Group’s leadership appeared resistant to letting New Approach, or the educational outreach director New Approach had approved, educate them on the substance of the ballot measure much beyond a need-to-know basis. Illustrating the point, I only learned that Oneschuk was preparing for her first major public debate incidentally. Concerned that Oneschuk would consequently be inadequately prepared, I texted Moffat less than a month before election day: “Who is prepping, Emily [Oneschuk]? [sic]” When Moffat replied, “Jen [Manley] and Danielle [McCourt],” I received no pushback to my exasperated response: “But neither of them know anything.” 

Rather, sharing concern about Oneschuk’s upcoming debate performance—and appreciating the sensitivity of “the triumvirate” (referring to McCourt, Tocci, and Manley) to anything resembling stepping on toes—Moffat proposed a mock debate between Oneschuk and me as a tactful solution.

But the mock debate was subsequently cancelled last minute without advanced notice for me and Moffat. And Oneschuk during her October 15, 2024, debate—like Spencer—did not demonstrate familiarity with approved rebuttal talking points that had already been in use for months (complete, rough AI transcript here). For example, not once did she mention the reassuring public health data from Colorado that strongly suggested Question 4’s decriminalization provisions would not be harmful for public health. From this point until the end of the campaign, Oneschuk continued to struggle with incorporating the new talking points into her live appearances. Moffat expressed approval over text that, for Oneschuk’s final remote debate, I live-fed her answers over Google chat.

While Oneschuk was the campaign’s strongest messenger demographically, her persuasiveness—as well as that of the whole campaign—was undermined by a lack of cohesion among strategic leadership.