The group working on a proposed constitutional amendment to legalize recreational cannabis in Florida is halfway toward its goal of getting the measure on the ballot next year.
According to the Florida News ServiceAccording to the statement, supporters of the proposed amendment have “provided more than 420,000 signatures on a valid petition to the state,” and would need to provide at least 891,589 signatures to get on the ballot in 2024.
“Last month, the committee passed the 222,898 signatures needed to begin a critical Florida Supreme Court review of the proposed ballot wording,” the news service reported.
The group behind the effort, Smart and Safe Florida, has significant backing from medical cannabis company Trulieve, which has a large presence in the Sunshine State.
Florida smart and safe She launched her campaign last summer.
“We came into this with a mission to provide access to high-quality products that are safe and have an appropriate value proposition to give people control over their medical journey — in the original days —,” Trulieve CEO Kim Rivers He said on time. “I don’t think that’s changing here. I mean, in fact, we’re at the heart of our business in terms of expanding the opportunity for access to a safe, legal product, which is what this will allow us to continue to do.”
Trulieve donated $5 million last summer when the campaign launched.
According to the Florida News Service, The company had “spent $25 million through the end of January on the Smart & Safe Florida initiative.”
The amendment would legalize the possession and consumption of cannabis for Florida adults age 21 or older and would also establish a framework for the state-regulated pot industry.
Specifically, this measure would enable existing medical cannabis facilities in the state to transition to recreational pot dispensaries.
Florida legalized medical cannabis in 2016.
“One of the interesting aspects here is that we already have it [a] The medical cannabis market and we have hundreds of thousands of patients in Florida who use medical cannabis regularly. Our ability to reach out and have more direct connections… is a bit unique from a positioning perspective,” Rivers said in Summer.
Activists in Florida have been thwarted in their previous attempts to get marijuana legalization across the line, including most recently in 2021, when an initiative was blocked by the state Supreme Court.
“Each initiative provided some level of learning,” Rivers said last year. With this initiative, the authors have taken a close look at the Supreme Court rulings surrounding previous efforts and have taken this into account. We think it is a very appropriate, narrowly focused and appropriately subjected amendment to the legislature.”
With a growing population that ranks as the third largest in the country, Florida is a desirable potential market for cannabis investors.
“Florida is definitely an interesting market, especially compared to some of the other markets that are more mature and more saturated,” he said. He said Jade Green, president of the cannabis industry advisory firm Next Titan Capital. “The main reason is that everyone has a similar belief that whatever happens in 2024, (recreational) adult cannabis will eventually come to Florida.”
“If you can get Florida to even rec (recreational marijuana), you’ll have a huge advantage in what will be one of the largest cannabis economies, not just in the US but in the world,” Green added.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely believed to be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has spoken negatively about marijuana legalization in the past.
“What I don’t like about it is if you go to some of these places that do that, it stinks when you’re in there, I mean, it stinks,” DeSantis said last year.
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