Florida Marijuana Campaign Fails To Qualify Legalization Initiative For November Ballot, State Officials Say

A Florida campaign has fallen short of collecting enough valid signatures
to qualify a marijuana legalization initiative for placement on the
November ballot, state officials have announced—though the campaign itself
says that determination is “premature.”

Following an aggressive opposition effort marked by litigation, signature
invalidations and even criminal investigations led by Gov. Ron DeSantis’s
(R) administration, the Florida Department of State announced on Sunday
that the cannabis campaign “failed to meet the requirements of Florida law
for placement on the 2026 General Election ballot.”

But Smart & Safe Florida, the campaign behind the marijuana initiative,
said it believes it actually submitted enough signatures to qualify.

“We believe the declaration by the Secretary of State is premature, as the
final and complete county-by-county totals for validated petitions are not
yet reported,” a statement first noted by Florida Politics says. “We
submitted over 1.4 million signatures and believe when they are all
counted, we will have more than enough to make the ballot.”

As of Monday, the state Division of Elections’s website showed 783,592
valid signatures for the measure, but it needed 880,062 validated
signatures by Sunday to qualify.

Note to Press:
All twenty-two active proposed constitutional amendments by initiative
petitions failed to meet the requirements of Florida law for placement on
the 2026 General Election ballot. pic.twitter.com/yJPG6djYXj

— Florida Department of State (@FLSecofState) February 1, 2026

The Department of State said 21 other initiative campaigns also failed to
turn in sufficient signatures for ballot access.

Ahead of the signature turn-in, Florida’s attorney general and several
business and anti-marijuana groups urged the state Supreme Court to block
the cannabis initiative, calling it “fatally flawed” and unconstitutional.

The attorney general’s office had asked the state Supreme Court to review
the constitutionality of the legalization initiative. The court accepted
the request.

The Florida Chamber of Commerce, Florida Legal Foundation and Judge Frank
Shepherd filed a separate joint brief stating that the parties remain
“especially vigilant about the abuse of the citizen initiative process by
out-of-state interests that think of Florida as just another market and the
citizen initiative process as just another means of exploiting that market.”

The Florida Chamber of Commerce has consistently opposed attempts to move
forward with adult-use legalization, even as its own polling has shown
majority support for the reform.

The briefs were filed days after Smart and Safe Florida filed a lawsuit
against state officials, alleging that they improperly directed the
invalidation of about 71,000 signatures as the turn-in deadline approached.

The campaign fought several legal battles this cycle to ensure that its
initiative is able to qualify for ballot placement.

One of the more recent lawsuits, filed in the Leon County circuit court,
claimed Secretary of State Cord Byrd (R) directed county election officials
to invalidate about 42,000 signatures from so-called “inactive” voters and
roughly 29,000 signatures collected by out-of-state petitioners.

That came after another court upheld a previous decision to strike about
200,000 signatures that the state said were invalid because the petitions
didn’t include the full text of the proposed initiative. The campaign
contested the legal interpretation, but it declined to appeal the decision
based on their confidence they’d collected enough signatures to make up the
difference.

Earlier this month, the state attorney general’s office opened dozens of
criminal investigations and submitted subpoenas requesting records from
Smart & Safe Florida and its contractors and subcontractors over alleged
fraud related to the petitioning effort.

Activists said in November that they’d collected more than one million
signatures to put the cannabis measure on the ballot, but it’s also challenged
officials at the state Supreme Court level over delays the certification
process, arguing that the review of the ballot content and summary should
have moving forward months ago when it reached an initial signature
threshold. The state then agreed to move forward with the processing.

DeSantis campaigned heavily against an earlier version of the legalization
proposal, which received a majority of voters in 2024 but not enough to
meet the 60 percent threshold required to pass a constitutional amendment.
Former Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) unsuccessfully contested the prior
initiative in the courts.

In March, meanwhile, two Democratic members of Congress representing
Florida asked the federal government to investigate what they described as
“potentially unlawful diversion” of millions in state Medicaid funds via a
group with ties to DeSantis. The money was used to fight against a citizen
ballot initiative, vehemently opposed by the governor, that would have
legalized marijuana for adults.

The lawmakers’ letter followed allegations that a $10 million donation from
a state legal settlement was improperly made to the Hope Florida
Foundation, which later sent the money to two political nonprofits, which
in turn sent $8.5 million to a campaign opposing Amendment 3.

The governor said last February that the newest marijuana legalization
measure is in “big time trouble” with the state Supreme Court, predicting
it would be blocked from going before voters this year.

“There’s a lot of different perspectives on on marijuana,” DeSantis said.
“It should not be in our Constitution. If you feel strongly about it, you
have elections for the legislature. Go back candidates that you believe
will be able to deliver what your vision is on that.”

“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. I think it’s
going to have big time trouble getting through the Florida Supreme Court,”
he said.

The latest initiative was filed with the secretary of state’s office just
months after the initial version failed during the November 2024
election—despite an endorsement from President Donald Trump.

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.”

In 2023, 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 last 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.


*— Marijuana Moment is tracking hundreds of cannabis, psychedelics and drug
policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon
supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps,
charts and hearing calendar so they don’t miss any developments.*


*Learn more about our marijuana bill tracker and become a supporter on
Patreon to get access. —*

In the background, a recent poll from a Trump-affiliated research firm
found that nearly 9 in 10 Florida voters say they should have the right to
decide to legalize marijuana in the state.

Meanwhile, Florida lawmakers recently approved a bill to significantly
reduce the fee for military veterans to obtain medical marijuana registry
identification cards, slashing the cost to one-fifth of the current amount.

The subcommittee vote on the fee reduction bill came about a week after the
Senate Regulated Industries Committee advanced separate legislation to ban
smoking or vaping marijuana in public places. Rep. Alex Andrade (R) is
sponsoring a similar bill to ban public cannabis smoking in the House of
Representatives.

*Here’s an overview of other pending Florida marijuana bills:*

- A House lawmaker is sponsoring a bill to legalize recreational
marijuana that also aims to break up what he calls “monopolies” in the
state’s current medical cannabis program by revising the business licensing
structure.
- Another representative’s bill would protect the parental rights of
medical cannabis patients, preventing them from losing custody of their
children for using their medicine in accordance with state law.
- Other lawmakers are sponsoring legislation to expand the state’s
medical marijuana program, in part by increasing supply limits for
patients and waiving registration fees for honorably discharged military
veterans. The proposals would also allow doctors to recommend cannabis
to any patient who has a condition for which they have been prescribed
opioids.
- A senator is sponsoring a bill to legalize home cultivation of
marijuana for registered medical cannabis patients in the state.

*Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.*

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Initiative For November Ballot, State Officials Say appeared first on Marijuana
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