Update: Florida’s Cannabis Legalization Measure Fails Despite Majority Support
Florida voters have an opportunity to make their state the 25th in the nation to legalize adult-use cannabis on Election Day, but they’ll need a 60% supermajority to do so—the state’s threshold for all constitutional ballot measures.
Sponsored by Smart and Safe Florida and financially backed by the state’s existing medical cannabis companies, Amendment 3 proposes the following:
- Allow adults 21 years or older to purchase and possess up to 3 ounces of cannabis flower or 5 grams of concentrate for personal use from a licensed dispensary;
- Allow the state’s existing medical marijuana treatment centers (MMTCs) to remain vertically integrated while expanding to a forthcoming adult-use market;
- Allow the Florida Legislature to determine a process for licensing additional market entrants, although it would not be required to do so;
- Protect adults 21 and older and licensed cannabis operators from criminal or civil liabilities or sanctions under Florida law for use, possession or commercial operations under the amendment (licensed cannabis delivery drivers couldn’t go to jail for simply doing their jobs); and
- Leave regulatory duties in place for the Florida Department of Health, as currently delegated under the state’s voter-approved medical cannabis amendment.
To satisfy the state’s single-subject rule, Amendment 3 does not do the following:
- Allow for home cultivation without follow-up legislation from the state Legislature;
- Allow for smoking in public places, such as restaurants, or prevent local jurisdictions from banning smoking and vaping in public parks or on beaches;
- Create a new regulatory body to oversee an adult-use marketplace;
- Provide automatic expungement for past cannabis-related offenses;
- Provide cannabis operators with criminal immunity that extends beyond licensed activities already protected under the state’s medical cannabis laws;
- Create a licensing structure or market caps;
- Establish a social equity or social justice program; or
- Establish other specific program parameters that were intentionally omitted from the amendment’s language in order to survive the state’s judicial review.
While Amendment 3 is self-implementing with an effective date of six months following its potential passage, nothing prevents the state Legislature from writing follow-up legislation to provide for home grows or other reform items that legalization advocates could not include in the ballot language per state law.
According to the ballot measure’s text, “Nothing in this amendment prohibits the [Florida] Legislature from enacting laws that are consistent with this amendment.”