Florida Marijuana Legalization Ballot Measure Tops 420,000 Signatures, With Supreme Court Review Pending
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A marijuana industry-backed campaign to put a legalization initiative before voters on the 2024 ballot has met a symbolic milestone, netting more than 420,000 valid signatures to date. 420, of course, is a special number for cannabis reform advocates, with April 20 being the unofficial holiday to celebrate the plant. The Florida Division of Elections updates petition counts on the measure at the end of each month, and at the close of February the campaign had netted 420,072 valid signatures, a development first noted by News Service Florida. At the end of January, the measure cleared a major hurdle, getting enough signatures to initiate a state Supreme Court review of the measure’s language. That analysis is still pending. The Florida Supreme Court will be looking to make sure that the text of the proposal doesn’t violate the state Constitution’s single subject rule and isn’t affirmatively misleading to voters. If the court determines that the initiative meets those standards, the campaign will need to collect a total of at least 891,589 signatures to make the ballot next year. Past attempts to place adult-use legalization on the Florida ballot have been challenged and rejected by the court. Smart & Safe Florida, which filed the legal cannabis measure last summer, is being funded almost entirely by the state’s largest medical cannabis operator Trulieve, which provided initial seed money to get the campaign off the ground and has now contributed $25 million to the effort. If approved, the measure would allow existing medical cannabis companies in the state like Trulieve to begin selling marijuana to all adults over 21. It contains a provision that would allow—but not require—lawmakers to take steps toward the approval of additional businesses. Home cultivation by consumers would not be allowed under the proposal as drafted. Under the proposal, adults…

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Source : Florida Marijuana Legalization Ballot Measure Tops 420,000 Signatures, With Supreme Court Review Pending

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