Florida officials sent a letter of cease and desist to the campaign that wants to put a legalization marijuana initiative on Florida’s ballot in 2026, alleging the group “has committed multiple election laws violations.”
The Office of Election Crimes and Security (OECS)—part of Florida’s Department of State—also fined Smart & Safe Florida more than $120,000 for submitting completed petitions more than 30 days after they were signed.
Florida Department of Law Enforcement has received the matter for “potential criminal investigations.”
This campaign is behind the Amendment 3 ballot measure which was introduced last year but failed to receive 60 percent support to pass into law. It now works to prepare a revised amendment to be placed on next year’s ballot.
Among the claimed violations listed in the letter are that Smart & Safe Florida failed to provide the official text of the proposed constitutional amendment to voters when obtaining signatures as well as that it delivered “forged or fraudulent petitions”—such as one “purportedly signed by a Florida voter in February 2025, when, in fact, that voter has been deceased since November of 2024.”
According to a representative from the campaign, the group has full confidence in its process and plans to challenge the assertion by the State that they violated the Election Law.
The statement states that “the claims appear to be an intentional effort to prevent the citizens of Florida from expressing their support for a citizen driven amendment.” We stand behind the process, and we had our legal counsel review all communications and forms before mailing.
Other violations claimed by OECS assert that the campaign circulated non-approved petition forms “in a manner that has created the opportunity for fraud and has led to dozens of Florida voters completing and submitting multiple…petitions” and that it submitted completed petitions after a state-mandated deadline.
The letter demands “an immediate accounting of any and all petition forms that were obtained in response to one of your mailed packages that you or your agents have turned in” and further mandates that Smart & Safe Florida “immediately cease the mailing, use, or circulation of non-approved petition forms.”
The document states: “Initiatives must comply with law.” The document states that “the issues raised by this letter could undermine the public’s confidence in initiative processes.”
The letter, from Brad McVay, Florida’s deputy secretary of state for legal affairs and election integrity, was first published by Florida’s Voice, an outlet that previously reported Smart & Safe Florida had “sent two forms and a return envelope with prepaid postage” to supporters.
It describes that “one petition has the name of the voter and the number for voter registration pre-filled, while the other one is blank to allow additional signatures.”
According to the state, this practice has led to a “rise” in duplication of submissions.
In the letter, it says that voters “appear to be signing the forms with pre-filled data and then signing the forms without this pre-filled data.”
It acknowledges that voters “are doing this despite the following language at the bottom of each form: ‘[i]It is an offense to sign the same form more than once. However, more than 100 people are either ignoring this warning or not paying attention to it.
The letter also charges that instead of including the full text of its legalization amendment with petitions, Smart & Safe Florida was providing “campaign-style literature” with a “printed hyperlink to the text.”
The law says that “material changes” to the election material must be reviewed and approved. [of State] “Before you can use the version of this form.”
In earlier correspondence, Smart & Safe Florida admitted to state officials that its “stack of petitions is believed to contain duplicates.”
This group explained that the purpose of the blank forms was to allow someone else to complete them, as opposed the the person who filled in the prefiled form. It appears that people have returned duplicate forms, having filled them out in their names.
“We do not believe this was done with any malice or purposeful intent—just a case of confusion with the mailing process,” the campaign added.
McVay’s new letter says in the sponsorship “appears blaming voters for the dual submissions.”
“Smart & Safe Florida acknowledges the voter confusion, yet you place blame on the voter’s inability to properly follow the mailing process,” he wrote. According to our initial review, the confusion appears to be attributable your decision to mail two forms.
McVay’s second letter imposes an additional $121,850 on the campaign because it did not deliver petitions “promptly,” within 30 calendar days, after the voter signed the petition.
The fine for each petition that’s delivered after 30 days of the voter signing the petition is $50, or $250, if it was done with malice.
According to the State, there were 2 437 petitions that had been delivered late. A $50 per petition fine indicates officials don’t believe that the campaign did anything malicious.
Smart & Safe Florida, the campaign behind both the current marijuana push and last year’s failed Amendment 3 legalization effort, was recently dealt a separate blow when a state judge dismissed the medical marijuana company Trulieve’s defamation lawsuit against the state Republican Party.
Trulieve was the main financial backer of Smart & Safe Florida’s Amendment 3, spending nearly $100 million trying to pass it. The defamation lawsuit was filed by the company against the GOP before the election in November, claiming that they knowingly misled the voters on the proposed changes. Trulieve said the GOP’s opposition was “intentionally false,” and that the claims were made to try to convince Florida voters against reform.
Last year, the marijuana proposition received a large majority in the voting but Florida’s requirement of 60% for constitutional amendments made the campaign unsuccessful. That was despite outsized funding—chiefly from Trulieve—and an endorsement from President Donald Trump.
Smart & Safe Florida is now gearing up for next year’s ballot fight, working to collect the 891,523 signatures needed to qualify for the the 2026 election.
The campaign’s 2026 iteration includes several changes that seem responsive to issues raised by critics about the 2024 version.
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 regulations for adults to be able to grow their own marijuana for personal purposes at home.” 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 join the market. Others feared that the previous proposal could create a monopoly for existing medical marijuana businesses because the legislation was not forbidden from issuing additional licenses.
Early in March however, the legislative committee of the state proposed a plan which would place significant restrictions on initiatives being placed on ballots, and could hinder legalization efforts.
In a recently released survey by the University of North Florida it was found that despite the fact the ballot measure last year failed, voters support the legalization on a bipartisan basis. This survey found that 67 per cent of Florida voters support this reform. This includes 82 per cent of Democrats, 65 percent of Independents and 55percent 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, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a staunch critic of legalization, 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. You can vote for your legislator if you are strongly against it. 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. The governor’s reasoning for believing that this version will face a completely different outcome is not clear.
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 a mixed record on marijuana policy.
Read both letters from Deputy Secretary of State Brad McVay to Smart & Safe Florida:
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