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Back in 2000, voters had 8 ballot questions that ranged from a petition to cut the state income tax to Q.8, which would have given judges the ability to give defendants in certain drug cases the option of treatment.
https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/elepdf/IFV2000.pdf
https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/elepdf/IFV2000.pdf
I recall that voters in Boston's most heavily Black wards, 12 and 14, were overwhelmingly in favor of "treatment on demand," as Question 8 was referred to. In fact, Boston went for the question with 97k votes in favor to 64k against. https://electionstats.state.ma.us/ballot_questions/view/6030/filter_by_county:Suffolk
But Massachusetts voted the measure down 48% to 44%. Law enforcement was against the measure. The Mass. District Attorneys Association led the charge against Q. 8.
Even back then, addiction affected whites as well as Blacks and Latinos, but the popular conception of who "junkies" were was that they were Black and brown.
That all changed when enough white people got addicted that it became an "opiate crisis." Interestingly, treatment on demand has become the law of the land without a statewide ballot initiative.
Junkies became real people suffering from substance abuse misorder. https://www.baystatebanner.com/2018/04/17/drug-policies-evolve-as-addiction-becomes-a-white-problem/
I wonder how the other questions on the ballot would fare today? @CallaWalsh noted that incarcerated people lost the right to vote in that year. Are Mass. voters in such a different place now that they'd support reversing that?