Floridians are about to vote on Amendment 3, a ballot measure that would legalize recreational marijuana for all adults. The state is already the country’s largest medical-only market, with 831,000 doctor-approved patients spending more than $2 billion annually. Legalizing it fully would open sales to the Sunshine State’s 140 million annual visitors.
The ballot measure, on the eve of the vote, appears closer than legalization’s broad popularity suggests. A new poll from Florida Atlantic University puts support. Reluctance among some voters in the state may owe to controversy over whether the amendment is too friendly to Trulieve and other big companies in how it would shape the state’s market. Leading the opposition to the “big weed cartel” that Amendment 3 would create is Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
One can see the logic in DeSantis, who has built his career on anti-wokeness, taking on weed, which still carries a vague whiff of the anti-capitalist left. But in fact, Trulieve—which won Florida’s first medical marijuana license in 2015—had ties to Tallahassee Republicans when DeSantis was a congressional backbencher.
Many questions about weed legalization remain unanswered, but after a decade, there’s now a basic understanding of how state marijuana markets work and are regulated. However the DeSantis–hemp alliance came about, it now looks like he’s attacking the gray industry of legal weed to benefit the grayer industry of legal hemp.One of the Biggest Questions of the Election Is About to Be Answered. It Doesn’t Look Good for Kamala Harris.