Grassroots campaign helped defeat Amesbury pot ban question
AMESBURY — The voters spoke Tuesday and the message was loud and clear: The sale of recreational marijuana would be OK here.
According to unofficial results from the city clerk’s office, 2,055 residents voted down a proposed ban on retail marijuana establishments in Amesbury with 1,141 voting in favor of the prohibition.
What the results don’t show, however, is how one man who raised $420 at his only fundraiser defeated the ban almost singlehandedly.
A well-known advocate for marijuana legalization, resident Scott Winters was elated when the statewide Question 4, which legalized the drug for recreational use while regulating it in a manner similar to alcohol, was approved by 58 percent in Amesbury last fall.
But Winters was also aware he still had a long road ahead of him.
Winters was appointed by Mayor Ken Gray to the city’s new Recreational Marijuana Committee over the winter. While Winters approved of the temporary moratorium on retail marijuana the City Council adopted last month, he was unhappy with the idea of an outright ban that the council placed on the ballot by in a 5-4 vote in September.
Creating the Pro Retail Cannabis Amesbury ballot question committee soon after, Winters and his girlfriend, Kirsten Muse, began a grassroots campaign that included door-to-door visits, lawn signs, a heavy social media presence and a “Vote No on 1” baseball cap.
“We didn’t do any mailings or anything,” Winters said. “We had signs but we were determined not to sink a bunch of money into this. We did one fundraiser (on Sept. 28) and we stopped our donations at the $420 mark.”
While Pro Retail Cannabis Amesbury would eventually raise $570 before Election Day, Winters and Muse, who serves mostly as treasurer, knew they had an issue city voters would support.
“There are a lot of people who have private messaged me over the years who can’t speak (on the matter). Either they were business owners or schoolteachers, or mental health professionals, or large-scale landowners,” Winters said. “There are all kinds of people who encouraged me to keep going. This wasn’t just my thing. There was always a bunch of folks here in town who were just kind of egging me on. That kept me inspired.”
Winters’ committee also received last-minute support from the Marijuana Policy Project.
The project, a Massachusetts nonprofit, was the driving force behind last year’s Question 4 initiative. The group’s communications director, Jim Borghesani, said the Marijuana Policy Project is working hard to make sure the victory it achieved a year ago holds up.
“We don’t want to see a patchwork prohibition put in place,” Borghesani said.
Deploying one of its first “Block the Ban” social media campaigns, the Marijuana Policy Project produced a quick commercial advocating against the ban for Pro Retail Cannabis Amesbury, which Winters placed on Amesbury-related Facebook pages over the weekend.
“We played a very minor role in this,” Borghesani said. “Scott deserves all the credit for this. He personally advocated against the ban for all the right reasons. We want to make sure the criminal market is undercut as soon as possible. And we want to make sure that Amesbury gains new tax revenues from a legal and regulated industry.”
Borghesani said his organization is looking to replicate the model used in Amesbury in other communities as similar ballot measures arise across the state.
“We are very happy with the results in Amesbury but clearly a lot of the results have gone the other way,” Borghesani said. “Over the past week, Dracut shot down a moratorium and so did Marshfield a few weeks ago. So, the local groups are key for us. It will be local groups that will make this happen.”
With the proposed ban no longer a reality, the city must still wait for the state Cannabis Control Commission to work out an application process, which it plans to roll out in the spring.
“I know I keep saying ‘we’ but it really has been the people of the city who have always been in sync with this,” Winters said. “I would have walked away if it wasn’t for the fact that the people in the city really wanted to do this.”
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Jim Sullivan covers Amesbury and Salisbury for The Daily News. He can be reached via email at jsullivan@newburyportnews.com or by phone at 978-961-3145. Follow him on Twitter @ndnsully.
