Supreme Court ruling: Voters in November will be able to decide on recreational marijuana in Florida

Florida Supreme Court justices on Monday approved ballot language for a constitutional amendment that will ask Floridians in November whether they want to legalize recreational cannabis for adults 21 years or older.

The measure must get 60% approval to become law, which is the highest threshold for any ballot measure to be passed in the nation.

The official ballot summary as written “allows adults 21 years or older to possess, purchase, or use marijuana products and marijuana accessories for non-medical personal consumption by smoking, ingestion, or otherwise,” and allows Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers, and other state licensed entities “to acquire, cultivate, process, manufacture, sell and distribute such products and accessories.”

The proposed amendment had been fiercely opposed by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, who claimed in a legal filing last year that the initiative “misleads voters in several key aspects.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis, who predicted in January that the court would put the proposal on the ballot, recently criticized the measure as having “the broadest language I’ve ever seen.”

The Florida Supreme Court is the final decision-maker determining whether a proposed constitutional amendment makes it on the ballot. Once a measure gathers enough signatures to qualify, the court is charged with determining that the language that will appear on the ballot is clear and limited to a single subject. It can reject measures that don’t meet legal standards, which happened in 2021 when a proposed constitutional amendment regarding the legalization of recreational cannabis came before the Supreme Court.

The 60% approval by voters may not be easy. A Florida Chamber of Commerce poll released in January found that 57% of Florida voters support legalizing recreational cannabis. But that wouldn’t pass. However, a University of North Florida survey conducted on November 30 of last year showed that 67% support the proposal.

Florida has had medical marijuana since 2016, when more than 71% of voters approved a constitutional amendment to make that legal.

Currently, 24 states have legalized recreational weed. They are: Alaska, California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Virginia, Ohio, Maryland, Delaware, New York, Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.

The Smart & Safe Florida political committee has led the campaign to get the measure on the ballot. It has spent more than $40 million to date to get more than a million valid signatures to qualify for the Supreme Court review (which this year was 891,523 signatures). Nearly all of Smart & Safe’s funding came from Trulieve, one of the country’s largest multi-state cannabis operators.