Florida Republican lawmakers are working to impose significant restrictions on the ability to put initiatives on the ballot—a plan that could impair efforts to let voters decide on marijuana legalization next year.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R)—who strongly advocated against a 2024 legalization proposal that ultimately failed to achieve a steep 60 percent vote threshold—pitched the idea to lawmakers, calling for changes to the petition gathering process that threaten to further complicate citizen-led reform efforts for a range of issues.
The House Government Operations Subcommittee took action on Thursday to address this issue. It advanced a bill by Rep. Jenna Persons Mulicka (R), which, amongst other changes, would require that petitioners post a bond of $1 million before beginning signature collection, ban the use out-of state petitioners, and reduce the time period in which the signatures are to be delivered to the election officials.
At the hearing, Persons-Mulicka said that “the process has been hijacked by fraudsters from out of state looking to make quick money and special interests intent on buying into our Constitution.” “The bill seeks a solution to the problem, and provides assurances that only people with an interest in changing our Constitution will be able to do so.”
The opponents say that the bill, which has now been sent to the House State Affairs Committee for a full vote, will have an adverse effect on the citizen-led efforts at the ballot box, increasing the costs and exposing campaigns to greater liability in terms of signature collection.
According to supporters and activists of marijuana reform, this proposal represents government overreach. DeSantis, along with other Republicans of note, have expressed their doubts about letting voters choose constitutional amendments. The last few legalization ballot measures were also challenged by officials in various states.
Last year, the marijuana proposition received a majority vote. However, Florida’s constitutional amendment requirement of 60% made this latest effort unsuccessful. That’s despite tens of millions of dollars coming into the Smart & Safe Florida campaign, including from major cannabis companies—primarily the multi-state operator Trulieve.
To add more restrictions on the petitioning process—which under Persons-Mulicka’s bill would also include increased fines for election law violations and a system allowing voters to retract their signatures from petition forms—could make Smart & Safe’s 2026 legalization push all the more challenging.
Asked by MEDCAN24 about the potential impact of the bill on the campaign, a Smart & Safe Florida spokesperson declined to comment.
A similar piece of legislation, sponsored by Sen. Blaise (R), has been introduced in the Senate.
The sponsor of the House Bill did not explicitly state that it was a response to any specific issue. However, the arguments for changing the current process were heard frequently in Florida in the lead-up to the last election, where both abortion and marijuana rights were on ballots.
The new law would exempt signatures that were collected prior to enactment from the restrictions. Smart & Safe Florida has so far submitted just over 7,100 valid signatures of the 891,523 needed to make the 2026 ballot with its latest version of the legalization initiative, according to the Florida Division of Elections.
This version 2026 of the Trump campaign includes several improvements that appear to be in response to criticisms made about the original 2024 version. The 2024 edition was supported by Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
New language has been added to the law that prohibits marijuana products from being marketed as if they are appealing to kids.
Further, it states explicitly that the legislation will not “prevent the Legislature from providing reasonable regulation for home-grown marijuana for adults’ personal use.” This clarification could help to calm the fears of some advocates, who were concerned about the absence of home-grown marijuana in the original proposal.
The initiative would also make it so medical marijuana operators that have been licensed as of January 1, 2025 would be able to start providing for adult-use sales starting on the effective date.
A new nuance of the proposal is the licensing for future businesses who want to get into the medical marijuana market. The previous version was criticized by some for creating a monopoly that would benefit only the current medical marijuana operators. It simply stated that additional licenses were not prohibited, but did not mandate that it be taken up.
In a recent survey, the University of North Florida revealed that despite a failed ballot measure last year, the majority of voters support the reform. It showed that 67 percent of Florida voters now back legalization, including 82 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of independents and 55 percent of Republicans.
The results conflict with another recent poll from the Florida Chamber of Commerce, a proactive opponent of legalization, that found majority support for the reform among likely voter (53 percent) but not enough to be enacted under the 60 percent requirement.
Meanwhile, the governor said in January that the latest version of the legalization initiative is in “big time trouble” with the state Supreme Court, predicting it will be blocked from going before voters next year.
DeSantis stated, “There are many different views on marijuana.” It shouldn’t be in the Constitution. Elections for the legislative body are available if it is something you strongly feel about. You can go back and talk to candidates who you feel will be capable of delivering what your vision for that is.”
“But when you put these things in the Constitution—and I think, I mean, the way they wrote, there’s all kinds of things going on in here. The Florida Supreme Court is going to be very difficult for it, he says.
Last year, the governor accurately predicted that the 2024 cannabis measure from the campaign would survive a legal challenge from the state attorney general. He doesn’t explain why this version of the campaign would have a different result.
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Separately, a Florida GOP senator claimed recently that the legalization campaign “tricked” Trump into supporting the 2024 measure by misleading him and the general public about key provisions.
Ahead of the election, Trump said in September that he felt Amendment 3 was “going to be very good” for the state.
Before making the comments, Trump met with the CEO of Trulieve, Kim Rivers, as well as with a GOP state senator who is in favor of the reform.
While Trump endorsed the Florida cannabis initiative—as well as federal rescheduling and industry banking access—he has since been silent on cannabis issues. His cabinet members have conflicting records when it comes to marijuana policy.
Ohio GOP Lawmaker files bill to revise voter-approved marijuana law with less drastic changes than Senate passed measure
Side Pocket Images. Photo by Chris Wallis.
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