DeSantis Admits Marijuana Legalization Is Popular With Florida Voters Even Though He Opposes It

The Republican governor of Florida is conceding that “more people probably
agreed” with a marijuana legalization ballot initiative he helped defeat
last year than sided with his prohibitionist viewpoint—but he argued that
it was the “morally right” choice for him to intervene to prevent the sale
of “dangerous stuff” in his state.

At an event hosted by the Pennsylvania Family Institute on Saturday, Gov.
Ron DeSantis (R) talked about his administration’s uphill work to dissuade
voters from approving both the cannabis measure as well as a separate
reproductive rights initiative during the November 2024. While both
initiatives received majority support from voters, they failed to meet the
state’s high 60 percent threshold required to enact constitutional
amendments.

In the speech, DeSantis claimed that the marijuana proposal, Amendment 3,
wouldn’t just have legalized cannabis but also made it a “constitutional
right to possess and smoke it, including in public,” while giving one
company in particular “a lot of benefits,” seemingly referring to the Smart
and Safe Florida campaign’s largest financier Trulieve.

“Somehow you got people that are going to spend a lot of money to basically
make us California through the back door with these initiatives and these
amendments,” DeSantis said. “The marijuana people spent $150 million on
this. The abortion people spent $130 million. So we had to contend with
$280 million of spending on very misleading language—and, let’s just be
honest, they were pushing issues in which probably more people agreed with
them than agreed with me or agreed with us.”

“Marijuana was somewhat popular,” the governor said in comments first
reported by Florida Politics. “I didn’t do it to be popular. I did it
because it was the right thing to do. So we were having to deal with
navigating all this.”

Despite raising money to finance ads opposing the cannabis measure,
DeSantis said governors don’t officially “have a role in these amendments.”
He faulted “special interest” parties and the state Supreme Court approval
of the initiative language that he described as a “mistake.”

“I mean, most people that get elected in my positions like mine, all their
advisors say, ‘stay away from this. There’s nothing for you to gain by
getting involved in this. All you’re going to do is alienate supporters,'”
he said. “And that may be true, but that also wouldn’t be the right thing
to do. It wouldn’t be the morally right thing to do. So I was in a
position. I had this platform as governor. I had a megaphone. There were
things being proposed that would be harmful for my state.”

“In terms of the marijuana, I mean, you can’t function as a state if you
smell marijuana everywhere—if these kids are doing it,” DeSantis said. “And
this isn’t the marijuana they had in Woodstock. This is really, really
dangerous stuff, so it would have been terrible for Florida.”

*Watch DeSantis’s comments on marijuana, starting around 14:05 into the
video below:*

“We dug in. We barnstormed the state. We made the case to the people of
Florida, and we were the first state not just to defeat an abortion, but
also marijuana—and we did it in the same year, in the same election,
against $280 million,” he said.

Cannabis reform enjoys majority support in Florida, according to multiple
polls that led up to a vote on an adult-use legalization ballot initiative
last year. It ultimately fell short of the steep 60 percent threshold for
passage, and part of the opposition came from the Florida Police Chiefs
Association (FPCA) and the Florida Sheriffs Association (FSA).

Advocates are now working on a new cannabis initiative that they hope to
place on Florida’s 2026 ballot. As of this summer, the renewed legalization
campaign has collected more than 75 percent of the required signatures to
put the marijuana measure before voters next year, according to state
officials.

DeSantis said in February that the newest proposal is in “big time trouble”
with the state Supreme Court, predicting it will be blocked from going
before voters next year.

Smart & Safe Florida is hoping the revised version will succeed in 2026.
The campaign—which in the last election cycle received tens of millions of
dollars from cannabis industry stakeholders, principally the multi-state
operator Trulieve—incorporated certain changes into the new version that
seem responsive to criticism opponents raised during the 2024 push.

For example, it now specifically states that the “smoking and vaping of
marijuana in any public place is prohibited.”Another section asserts that
the legislature would need to approve rules dealing with the “regulation of
the time, place, and manner of the public consumption of marijuana.”


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policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon
supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps,
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Last year, the governor accurately predicted that the 2024 cannabis measure
from the campaign would survive a legal challenge from the state attorney
general. It’s not entirely clear why he feels this version would face a
different outcome.

While there’s uncertainty around how the state’s highest court will
navigate the measure, a poll released in February showed overwhelming
bipartisan voter support for the reform—with 67 percent of Florida voters
backing legalization, including 82 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of
independents and 55 percent of Republicans.

However, 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.

Another recent poll of Florida Republican voters showed just 40 percent of
that demographic said they’d vote in favor of the legalization proposal.

In the background of the campaign’s signature development, DeSantis signed
a GOP-led bill in June 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.

Meanwhile in Florida, a state senator recently filed a pair of bills for
the 2026 legislative session that would provide employment and parental
rights protections for registered medical marijuana patients.

The post DeSantis Admits Marijuana Legalization Is Popular With Florida
Voters Even Though He Opposes It appeared first on Marijuana Moment.