Shira Schoenberg: Question 4 failed, but let’s keep talking about psychedelics
Voters have rejected a ballot question that would have legalized psychedelic drugs, but that shouldn’t be the last word on how to make the potential health benefits of these drugs available to those who need them.
Scientists — and the US Food and Drug Administration — should recognize the interest in psychedelics and expedite research into and approval of new medical drugs that use these substances to treat mental health conditions. Research is already ongoing at leading medical institutions into whether psychedelic medication can treat depression and anxiety. If clinical trials are successful, federal approval would make these substances more widely available, likely with insurance coverage and with all the guardrails inherent in the drug approval process.
In Massachusetts, a veteran-focused bill signed into law in August created a working group to study the benefits of alternative therapies, like psilocybin, in treating veterans’ mental health disorders. The commission is charged with making recommendations regarding the provision of psychedelic therapy to treat veterans. Its work is ongoing.
Ideally, this commission’s recommendations would guide the Legislature on whether it should set up a framework for psychedelic therapy for veterans and what a safe, responsible model might look like. The Legislature could then consider the issue with input from experts and relevant parties — often a more balanced way to decide an issue than by having voters approve a ballot question written by an advocacy group. If the therapy works for veterans, it could always be expanded to other groups.
Meanwhile, physicians should recognize that some patients may use psychedelics illicitly and should be prepared to have honest conversations about the potential benefits and risks of these drugs, and what the potential interactions are between a patient’s medical condition or prescription medication and psychedelics.
Scot Lehigh: What happens now that Question 2 has passed?
Now that Question 2 has passed, expect acrimony aplenty in the months ahead. That’s so for this reason: Question 2 ends the MCAS exam as a high school graduation requirement but does not deal with the widely recognized need for a way to guarantee that students are achieving educational competence that goes beyond simply trusting the districts or schools.
That, after all, is the haphazard approach Massachusetts took back before the state’s landmark 1993 Education Reform Act, and in those days, too many students were graduating without the skills they needed to succeed at work or college.
From the legislative leadership to the Healey administration, there’s a recognition that returning to the old days and old ways won’t suffice, the more so because Massachusetts has almost nothing by way of state-mandated courses that students must complete to graduate.
House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka have already broached that subject publicly, earning them a rebuke from the Massachusetts Teachers Association, the union that backed Question 2. “The State House is not Ron Mariano’s house or Karen Spilka’s house — the speaker and Senate president should refrain from crossing the will of the people,” declared MTA President Max Page in another of those combative and tone-deaf statements he seems to enjoy issuing.
But the state’s largest teachers union should expect no less. After all, it self-funded an expensive and misleading campaign about the MCAS, one whose ads repeatedly suggested Question 2 would “replace” the graduation exam. There was no replacement mechanism in the ballot question, which would be constitutionally difficult. The MTA hasn’t even proposed a workable replacement plan.
Also at question is what role Governor Maura Healey would play in efforts to establish a new statewide graduation requirement. But Healey would have to lean in more for that effort to succeed. Although the governor opposed Question 2 in a number of public statements, she did not campaign vigorously against it. And since the Question 2 effort was dramatically underfunded compared to the teachers union’s campaign, that hurt.
Senator Jason Lewis, Senate chairman of the Legislature’s joint education committee and a supporter of Question 2, has talked of requiring all or almost all students to take MassCore, the state’s elevated curriculum, as a requirement of graduation.
Two problems: For starters, half of Massachusetts high schools do not offer all the courses recommended by MassCore. Second, even if all were to begin offering those courses, that hardly assures that it would be rigorously taught or that students would be held to a realistic, standard level of achievement on them.
Massachusetts citizens should understand that a ballot question is a very blunt instrument, particularly when it is being used as a wrecking ball to topple a carefully constructed system. An actual replacement will take some time to be agreed upon. That effort will be left to Beacon Hill policymakers, who will need time and leeway to do the necessary work here.
Renée Loth: The Legislature should not mess with the MCAS question
The decisive win for Question 2 on the ballot — eliminating the MCAS exam as a requirement for high school graduation — secures the status of the Massachusetts Teachers Association as a political force to be reckoned with. The statewide union of 117,000 members that pushed hard for the initiative also was a key player in passing the millionaires surtax in 2022 and roundly defeated a charter school expansion ballot question in 2016. Love the union or not, that’s a significant show of strength. At a time when citizens have lost faith in so many bedrock institutions, including “education” more generally, it seems that voters still trust individual teachers.
The win should give pause to plans telegraphed by legislative leaders to deeply amend or even scrap the new law. In October both House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka, who opposed repealing the MCAS requirement, told reporters at the State House that they were reserving their right to alter some parts of the initiative should it pass. “We’ll see how big the margin is,” Mariano said.
Well, at least in Mariano’s home district of Quincy, the margin (according to the latest Associated Press figures) was 57 percent to 43 percent, a double-digit spread of 14 percentage points that would be considered a landslide in most political campaigns. Spilka hails from Ashland, which approved the question by a 54-45 margin. Framingham, the biggest city in her district, approved the question by 16 percentage points.
Many of us remember when the property tax-limiting initiative Proposition 2½ passed in 1980. Legislative leaders were so wary of the tax revolt movement that enacted the new law that they shifted responsibility for funding municipal governments onto the state — with large increases in local aid — rather than tinker with the voters’ will. Question 2 passed Tuesday with a slightly greater margin than Proposition 2½.
Certainly, a ballot initiative is only a law that can be changed by passage of another law, but the state Legislature already has a low standing with the voters. It would be wiser for State House leaders to work with the MTA on implementing the new law rather than ignore the message voters sent.