By gathering almost 636,000 verified voter signatures to put a marijuana legalization initiative on the poll in Florida.
With that benchmark within the bag, the pro-legalization committee Smart & Safe Florida wants lower than 256,000 extra signatures to be licensed to place leisure weed legalization up for a vote within the 2024 election.
The group is pushing to make Florida the twenty second state the place adults can legally blaze hashish for leisure use.
Despite harder restrictions on petition-gathering enacted by the Republican-controlled state legislature — corresponding to making it unlawful to pay unregistered petition circulators — Smart & Safe has made vital progress in simply eight months of campaigning.
The fast-track petition gathering would have been not possible with out the deep pockets of Trulieve, the biggest medical marijuana firm in Florida, which has expanded into eight states lately. The Quincy, Florida-based, publicly traded agency infused Smart & Safe with $30.5 million through six separate contributions since August. According to the Florida Division of Elections, Trulieve’s most up-to-date donation of $5 million hit Smart & Safe’s checking account in February.
The firm will seemingly need to kick in a number of million {dollars} extra if it hopes to safe the 60 p.c voter approval mandatory for the poll initiative to cross, in accordance with marijuana activists who’ve blended emotions about Trulieve’s involvement within the marketing campaign.
The proposed measure would not permit for home-growing hashish, and it will not change the “seed to sale” mannequin that requires Florida marijuana firms to deal with each aspect of hashish operations, from cultivation to retail gross sales. In different phrases, Trulieve and a handful of different well-funded company hashish giants would keep their dominance within the Florida market, absent extra motion from the Florida legislature.
The poll initiative would go away the door open for the Florida legislature to vary the state’s regulatory regime and eradicate the “seed to sale” mannequin, as have many states that legalized leisure marijuana after medical marijuana.
“The legislature could present for the licensure of entities that aren’t Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers to amass, domesticate, possess, course of, switch, transport, promote, and distribute marijuana merchandise and marijuana equipment for private use by adults,” the initiative reads.
Brad Puffenbarger, a Virginia-based marijuana advertising and marketing marketing consultant, claims that the measure would nonetheless permit the leisure weed market to stay “an extension of the present trade.”
“I’m all for legalizing hashish for leisure functions. But this poll initiative would entrench the present gamers and provides them a much bigger head begin,” Puffenbarger says.
Trulieve spokeswoman Nicolle Yelland informed New Times that firm CEO Kim Rivers was not out there for an interview. Yelland additionally declined to reply to questions and criticisms Puffenbarger and different pro-legalization advocates raised.
Two leisure pot legalization initiatives failed in 2021 after the Florida Supreme Court, in separate rulings, discovered that the proposed poll language was obscure or deceptive. The present initiative’s language nonetheless must be reviewed by the excessive courtroom earlier than it will probably make it onto the poll.
If handed, the Smart & Safe measure would amend the Florida structure to legalize leisure hashish in a voter referendum-driven course of much like the one used to legalize medical marijuana. Under the proposed modification, adults aged 21 and older would be capable of possess as much as three ounces of marijuana and as much as 5 grams of focus.
Puffenbarger, a legalization advocacy veteran, is aware of Florida’s medical marijuana regulatory framework effectively. He was normal supervisor for one of many first dispensaries to open in Florida and headed public relations for a few of the firms at the moment working within the state, Puffenbarger says.
“It’s fairly straightforward to persuade most of the people that one thing is best than nothing,” Puffenbarger says. “At the top of the day, the common individual would not actually care who they’re shopping for from. They simply need to have the ability to go purchase weed.”
Michael Minardi, a Tampa-based lawyer who led an unsuccessful marketing campaign in 2021 to legalize homegrown marijuana for grownup use, says residents have a basic proper to domesticate their very own hashish.
“Home cultivation places the ability within the folks’s palms,” Minardi says. “We are nonetheless having issues within the state with medical marijuana sufferers not having the ability to get entry to the merchandise they need and within the portions they need. If they might develop their very own drugs, they need to have the opportunity to take action.”
At least one government for a Trulieve rival agrees with Minardi.
Lynette French, chief working officer for Parallel, the mother or father firm of Florida medical marijuana supplier Surterra Wellness, wrote a December op-ed for the Tallahassee Democrat suggesting that Smart & Safe’s proposed modification ought to have included house cultivation.
“[The initiative] doesn’t do almost sufficient to increase the trade equitably,” French wrote. “Many hashish advocates, together with myself and Surterra management, are shifting our power to pushing for the precise for Floridians to develop their hashish at house.”
A Parallel spokesperson didn’t reply to e mail requests for remark.
Aside from Parallel, different medical marijuana operators in Florida appear to be high quality with Trulieve bankrolling the poll initiative, Puffenbarger says. No different licensed hashish firm in Florida has contributed to Smart & Safe, finance stories present.
“Even if they don’t seem to be publicly giving it tacit approval, they’re cool with it,” Puffenbarger says. “Let’s not child ourselves. This advantages them too.”
Other marijuana firms in Florida acknowledge Trulieve is the biggest operator within the state, and do not see a necessity to assist out Smart & Safe, Minardi provides. “[Trulieve] is the one with the cash and the one with 120 dispensaries within the state,” he says.
Indeed, Trulieve’s Rivers just lately acknowledged in a March 8 CNBC interview that, if handed, the initiative would go an extended method to increase her agency’s dominance in Florida.
“We handed the a million uncooked signatures counted for leisure or grownup use to be on the poll,” Rivers stated. “We anticipate will probably be a $6 billion market with 138 million vacationers and 20 million residents. So we’re arrange very properly.”
Most states which have legalized leisure hashish permit folks to develop it at house. According to a Marijuana Moment report, there have been a couple of holdouts amongst leisure weed states, together with Washington state, New Jersey, and Illinois, all of which don’t allow rising leisure weed at house. Washington has held off on permitting home-growing regardless of legalizing weed greater than 10 years in the past.
Warts and all, Minardi is in favor of Smart & Safe’s modification.
“As an advocate and as a felony protection lawyer who’s sick and uninterested in good folks getting arrested for hashish, I’m supportive of something that strikes this concern ahead,” Minardi says. “This is an issue we’re nonetheless coping with, even with medical marijuana sufferers. That could be eradicated with the proposed constitutional modification.”