The hashish legalization team in the back of Florida’s unsuccessful 2024 poll measure gained’t be taking any time without work in its pursuit to reform the state’s rules for the ones 21 and older.
Sensible & Protected Florida, a political motion committee chaired by means of David Bellamy of the pop track duo The Bellamy Brothers, filed a brand new initiative on Jan. 14 with the Florida Department of Elections to put a constitutional modification to legalize adult-use hashish at the state’s November 2026 poll.
The brand new submitting comes two months after Florida electorate supplied 56% majority fortify for a an identical initiative, Modification 3, that seemed at the 2024 poll, falling wanting the 60% supermajority threshold for the poll measure to go—a benchmark that electorate permitted within the 2006 election.
“This night, a powerful majority of Floridians voted in fortify of legalizing leisure marijuana for adults,” Sensible & Protected Florida officers stated in a press unencumber on election evening. “Whilst the result of Modification 3 didn’t transparent the 60 % threshold, we’re desperate to paintings with the governor and legislative leaders who accept as true with us on decriminalizing leisure marijuana for adults, addressing public intake, proceeding our focal point on kid protection, and increasing get entry to to secure marijuana thru house develop.”
RELATED: Florida’s Hashish Legalization Measure Fails In spite of Majority Make stronger
Even though the 2024 measure drew bipartisan fortify—together with from President-elect Donald Trump, a Florida voter—it used to be vehemently antagonistic by means of Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who claimed public puts could be crushed by means of the scent of the ones smoking hashish.
The governor’s management additionally accused the 2024 marketing campaign’s major monetary supporter, Tallahassee-based Trulieve, of making an attempt to create a monopoly for the state’s present scientific hashish operators thru an automated transition to a drawing close adult-use market, failing to say that almost all states practice this route to assist be sure that a clean shift to an expanded program and that the measure implicitly allowed for different entities to be approved.
In accordance to marketing campaign finance data, Trulieve contributed greater than $145 million of the $154 million in donations to fund the 2024 legalization push.
Others condemned the 2024 measure in line with public well being and protection fears frequently driven by means of prohibitionists, from claims of higher adolescence use to impaired riding.
Whilst Sensible & Protected Florida’s new initiative for 2026—the “Grownup Private Use of Marijuana”—incorporates most of the similar provisions, it added language to the poll abstract clarifying that the measure would “limit smoking and vaping in public,” “maintains prohibition on riding beneath [the] affect,” and “prohibits advertising and marketing and packaging sexy to kids.”
Additionally, the 2026 poll abstract maintains language in regards to the proposal making use of “to Florida regulation; does no longer alternate, or immunize violations of, federal regulation.” This used to be a key inclusion important to live to tell the tale the Florida Splendid Courtroom’s judicial evaluate procedure in 2024 after justices rejected a couple of measures aimed toward touchdown at the state’s 2022 poll measure.
The 2026 initiative additionally proposes to:
- Permit adults 21 years or older to buy and possess as much as 2 oz. of hashish flower or 5 grams of pay attention for private use from a certified dispensary;
- Permit the state’s present scientific marijuana remedy facilities (MMTCs) approved as of Jan. 1, 2025, to stay vertically built-in whilst increasing to a drawing close adult-use marketplace;
- Give protection to adults 21 and older, physicians and authorized hashish operators from prison or civil liabilities or sanctions beneath Florida regulation to be used, ownership, suggestions and/or business operations beneath the modification (approved hashish supply drivers couldn’t cross to prison for merely doing their jobs);
- Leaves regulatory tasks in position for the Florida Division of Well being, as recently delegated beneath the state’s voter-approved scientific hashish modification, together with licensing further marketplace entrants for an adult-use program;
- Outline public puts to incorporate, however no longer restricted to, all parks, seashores, public transit, roads, sidewalks, trails, faculties, arenas and executive structures;
- Permit personal actual property homeowners to ban hashish use on their homes;
- Permit the Florida Legislature to undertake law to supply for house cultivation of hashish by means of adults for his or her non-public use;
- Permit the Florida Legislature to undertake law that taxes hashish gross sales and suitable such tax revenues to state methods; and
- Require the Florida Legislature to undertake law associated with regulating public intake and licensing further marketplace entrants earlier than the efficient date of the invoice (Would possibly 1, 2027).
The legislative requirement in that ultimate bullet level veers from the 2024 proposal.
Sensible & Protected Florida filed the brand new proposal an afternoon after DeSantis introduced a unique legislative consultation to start on Jan. 27, partly, for lawmakers to overhaul the state’s citizen initiative procedure for proposing constitutional amendments, such because the hashish and abortion-related amendments that failed in 2024, The Related Press reported.
DeSantis’ Division of State claimed in September 2024 that most of the petitions that helped land the abortion rights constitutional modification on November’s poll had been fraudulent.
